Last year, when doing interviews about their latest album, Once More ‘Round the Sun, Mastodon said that they’d be releasing a companion EP to the album for songs that didn’t fit thematically on the album. “We were thinking we might release a collection of slower songs and more moody stuff and sort of let people know that that’s what it is, something they can curl up next to the fire in the winter time,” Dailor told us when we interviewed him. “A winter warmer, if you will.” And whether it’s the companion EP to their most recent album or not, Mastodon is definitely recording some new music.

Brent Hinds posted a picture on Instagram yesterday (17) of him playing a steel pedal guitar with the caption “Got to work on a really cool new Mastodon song today! First time playing my new 13 string pedal steel I got from @robertrandolf.” That’s presumably Robert Randolph, a well-known pedal steel guitarist. While Mastodon has used pedal steel before, this is probably the first time a 13-string has been used on their music. Hopefully we’ll get to hear the end result before too long.