Iron & Wine - Flightless Bird, American Mouth

Iron & Wine - Flightless Bird, American Mouth

From Song Exploder by Hrishikesh Hirway

February 18, 2026 · 29 min · Episode 243

About this episode

Hrishikesh Hirway revisits his episode with Iron & Wine's Sam Beam, discussing their collaboration and the upcoming album releases.

This week, I wanted to go back and revisit the episode that I made with Iron & Wine in the fall of 2022 about the song "Flightless Bird, American Mouth." And there are a couple of reasons. One, there’s a new Iron & Wine album that’s coming out this month, called Hen’s Teeth . And secondly, I actually have a song of my own that’s coming out today, the same day as this episode, and it features Iron & Wine on the track. It’s called “Stray Dogs,” and it’s the first song from an album that I’m releasing in April, called In The Last Hour of Light . And this Iron & Wine episode of the podcast is what actually led to our collaboration on the song. I’d been a huge fan of Iron & Wine for two decades, and this live taping, which happened in Wimberly, Texas, at the Blue Rock Artist Ranch and Studio, was the first time that I got to meet Sam Beam from Iron & Wine So before we go back and listen to the episode itself, I thought it could be nice to talk to Sam about how this episode happened, and then how that led to the making of “Stray Dogs.” For more, visit songexploder.net/iron-and-wine .

People in this episode

Host: Hrishikesh Hirway

Guest: Sam Beam

Topics covered

  • Iron & Wine
  • music collaboration
  • song analysis
  • podcast revisitation
  • new album release

Keywords

  • Iron & Wine
  • Flightless Bird, American Mouth
  • Stray Dogs
  • Hen’s Teeth
  • music podcast

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Iron & Wine

Products: Hen’s Teeth, Stray Dogs

Books & works: In The Last Hour of Light

Places: Wimberly, Texas, Blue Rock Artist Ranch and Studio

More episodes of Song Exploder

Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the Song Exploder podcast page.