Vinyl LP pressing. The Competition, the anticipated fourth album from Lower Dens, is a pop album with a concept both emotionally and politically urgent. The title is lead singer/songwriter Jana Hunter's term for a sociopsychological phenomenon that, in different ways, binds us all. Modern capitalism by nature generates a psychosis that accelerates our insecurities and anxieties to the point of total overload, corroding our intimacies, our communities, and our senses of self. The Competition speaks, in various ways, to the necessity of "socially de-conditioning ourselves and learning how to be people," Hunter says. "The issues that have shaped my life, for better or for worse, have to do with coming from a family and a culture that totally bought into this competitive mindset."