Zach Bryan has released Young Manhood and Other Donatable Organs, an eight-song EP that arrived today, October 16, via Warner Records. The project marks his first new music since January’s chart-topping With Heaven On Top (and its acoustic companion) and continues the Oklahoma singer-songwriter’s habit of following expansive albums with concise, reflective sets that let him experiment while staying rooted in the personal storytelling that built his audience.
Young Manhood and Other Donatable Organs
Listen to Young Manhood and Other Donatable Organs on Spotify · EP · Zach Bryan · 2026 · 8 songs
The EP runs roughly 28 minutes and was written by Bryan. It features two high-profile collaborations: Lana Del Rey on “Lies” and fellow Oklahomans the Turnpike Troubadours on “Plainsman.” Several tracks, including “Robot Killed the Working Man” and “Backwards,” were road-tested on his recent stadium tour. The full tracklist is:
- “Lodi When”
- “Robot Killed The Working Man”
- “Lies” (feat. Lana Del Rey)
- “Dog Days”
- “Backwards”
- “Is The Blue Tangled in You?”
- “Plainsman” (feat. Turnpike Troubadours)
- “You’ll Get By”
The cover art is characteristically striking: Bryan stands in a field aiming a shotgun at a smiling image of himself roughly a dozen feet away. An accompanying image shows the song titles emerging from the barrel. Bryan has said the concept came to him while watching the film Nocturnal Animals and draws from photographer Richard Misrach’s “Desert Fire #153.” He posted the images with the note, “Love you guys very much and hope you enjoy it.” The visual metaphor of confronting—or discarding—an earlier version of himself aligns with the EP’s overarching themes of reminiscence, redemption, and shedding past versions of young manhood.
Bryan, who turned 30 earlier this year, has spoken in recent work about sobriety and his December 2025 marriage to artist Samantha Leonard. Those life changes surface here in reflections on wilder days, regrets, and forward motion rather than straightforward love songs. “Backwards” centers on the image of walking through life while looking over one’s shoulder. “Lodi When” asks, in one lyric, whether a written account of a former self would focus on drinking or on a woman. “You’ll Get By” closes the set with a plainspoken assurance that people will endure. Elsewhere, “Robot Killed the Working Man” incorporates a sample of wrestling legend Dusty Rhodes’ classic “hard times” promo, while “Lies” adds strings and an atmospheric arrangement that lets Bryan and Del Rey trade lines about a relationship built on mutual pretense. Their chorus nods to Fleetwood Mac’s “Little Lies.” “Plainsman” pairs Bryan with Turnpike Troubadours’ Evan Felker amid instrumentation that includes fiddle, mandolin, and banjo.
Sonically, the EP is more varied than a simple mid-tempo folk-country collection. Bryan incorporates strings, samples, and shifts in tempo and mood while remaining recognizably himself. Production credits include longtime collaborator Eddie Spear and Jamie McLaughlin. The brevity of the format—something Bryan has used effectively on earlier EPs such as Summertime Blues, Quiet, Heavy Dreams, and Boys of Faith—appears to have given him room to try different textures without diluting the confessional core of his writing.
The release coincides with the announcement of the 2027 Young Manhood and Other Donatable Organs Tour, a stadium run across North America and Australia. Support acts include John Fogerty, Ryan Bingham and the Texas Gentlemen, Vance Joy, and others. Public tickets go on sale October 23; the North American leg opens April 28 at U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis and includes stops at Soldier Field, Mercedes-Benz Stadium, and Lincoln Financial Field before heading to Australia.
In less than a decade, Bryan has moved from independent releases to multiple Billboard 200 No. 1 albums, diamond-certified singles (“I Remember Everything” with Kacey Musgraves and “Something in the Orange”), and consistent stadium-level ticket sales. Young Manhood and Other Donatable Organs does not rewrite that trajectory so much as refine it: a tightly focused set that treats personal evolution as both subject and process. For listeners who have followed the through-line from early barroom songs to larger stages, it offers another chapter of the same restless, plainspoken self-examination—now delivered with a few new collaborators and a cover that makes the metaphor explicit.
