Joey Ryan (left) and Kenneth Pattengale of The Milk Carton Kids perform onstage for the 23rd Annual Americana Honors & Awards at Ryman Auditorium on September 18, 2024 in Nashville, Tennessee.

Getty Images for Americana Music Association

In 2011, the music industry looked much different.

Subscription music streaming was in its infancy (Spotify launched in the U.S. that year). Rising vinyl record sales felt like a modest novelty in an industry still reeling from peer-to-peer file sharing and illegal album downloads. Online, if fans wanted to buy a song, they likely needed an iTunes account.

That same year, Los Angeles folk duo Milk Carton Kids released Prologue and Retrospect, a pair of introductory albums posted to the band’s website for free. Anyone could grab a copy of the albums to sync with an iPod (remember iPods?) or desktop player — no strings attached.

“The music industry had been obliterated,” said Joey Ryan, one-half of the Milk Carton Kids. He added, “We just gave our records away for free. We put ‘em on our website as a full zip file with all the art and lyrics and liner notes.”

Ryan and bandmate Kenneth Pattengale shared a link to the album via email to fans met during their respective solo careers. It went viral in a time when virality felt more like a spontaneous work of art, and less like a calculated marketing strategy. The albums reached hundreds of thousands of listeners, laying the groundwork for Milk Carton Kids to be one of the most trusted groups in modern folk and Americana music.

This month, the band debuts Lost Cause Lover Fool, the seventh studio album in a 15-year collaborative career from Ryan and Pattengale. To celebrate the release, fans can visit the Milk Carton Kids website to download the album — a nod to the way many discovered the group years ago.

And, of course, it’ll be free.

“You’re asking almost nothing of someone when you’re asking them to stream your album,” Ryan said. “You’re asking them to make one click and you might get them for 20 seconds … But if you ask somebody to download 500 megabytes of music, artwork, liner notes, lyric sheets, you ask them to put it somewhere on a hard drive, organize it, open it up.”

He continued, “You’re really asking for their attention in a meaningful way. What you end up doing is asking somebody to slow down for a second and have a moment.”

Those who stop scrolling long enough to press “play” on Lost Cause Lover Fool will find a nine-song collection of richly-told stories anchored by the duo’s unmatched knack for two-part harmony and subtly wistful lyricism. The duo cut the album at a North Hollywood studio across the hall from where they tracked debut album Prologue years ago.

In addition to free download, the album hits streaming platforms and record store shelves on Friday via Far Cry Records and Thirty Tigers.

From songs like the pensive, banjo-layered opener “Blue Water” to the slow-brewing title track, Ryan hopes the album captures that “magical thing where it suspends time and takes a moment and makes it last for some small eternity,” he said.

“The world moves incomprehensibly fast,” Ryan said. “The idea that we’re searching for any way to make any moment feel meaningful and make it last is a big theme for us. It’s a theme in the songwriting and maybe an overarching purpose for making a record at this time.”

Ryan and Pattengale chronicle their search for meaningful moments with songs like album single “A Friend Like You,” a restless, road-tripping tune backed by a rare full-band arrangement, and “Sad Song,” a number written by roots musician and friend-of-the-band Willie Watson that — despite its name — is arguably the most upbeat on the album.

“It’s a little bit ironically-named, but it’s also true,” Ryan said. “Our whole identity is built around writing sad songs. The fact that we finally have a song called ‘Sad Song’ and it’s not even ours is really pleasing to me.”

The album closes with “Young Love,” which captures an out-of-reach yearning many know much too well. The song opens with the harmonized lines, “Do you ever think of me when you’re all alone and dreamin’ and you have no place to be?/ Do you ever think of me?”

“I’ve been really influenced by old-time song structures,” Ryan said of the banjo-led “Young Love." He continued, “The idea that you sing the melody, you play the melody. … That has been a really cool mode of songwriting for me. When I pick up the banjo, that’s my instinct. ‘Young Love’ is a modern old-time song in my mind.”

Want to hear for yourself? Give the album a download. Sit back, take a moment — and press “play.”