Planning For Burial share new single / video “You Think”

Photo credit: Matt Hannon

Today Planning For Burial shares a second look at his forthcoming new album It’s Closeness, It’s Easy, set for release on May 30^th via The Flenser—a soundtrack to life’s quiet changes—grief, love, and the bonds that time can’t break.

Planning for Burial is the solo project of Thom Wasluck, emerging from Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Following the cavernous and foreboding single “A Flowing Field of Green”, today he shares the fragile beauty of “You Think“, along with an accompanying video.

On “You Think“, his brittle, intimate atmospheric rock walks a precipice, driving and majestic, yet like it could crumble at any moment, eschewing the grandiose posturing of many of his peers for something infinitely more human and connected.

He comments: “‘You Think’ is the oldest song on the record as it has already been a live staple for a number of years and the only one to survive the first attempt at making the album. The lyrics evolved a few times over the years but the core of it is about making sense of everything after coming out of the blur of a years long self destruction party, my problems were of my own doing, and now I have to work to keep from falling back into the same pitfalls.

“Musically, I wanted to push the idea of what I thought Planning for Burial could be, I wanted to have songs with more movement, upping the tempo and utilizing my voice a bit more than usual while also trying to retain the smeared textured of guitars and synths.”

The accompanying video, directed by Minneapolis-based artist Alana Wool, pays homage to “Bastards Of Young” by The Replacements. Wasluck explains: “The Mats were adverse to the idea of self promotion in the video age, they just wanted to be a band, there’s parallels to that in todays music business where it’s often not good enough to be an artist, you now have to play the roll of content creator/influencer to appease the great algorithm just to get your music in front of people. It often feels anti-art.”

“I worked with Alana Wool to come up with a concept that pulls from The Mats complete middle finger attitude that was also a piece of art that to me really encompasses the feeling of angsty boredom with my own memory of late nights drinking alone, shuffling around the house watching the hours/days/weeks/etc peel away.”

If Planning For Burial’s previous release, 2017’s Below the House, was about returning home, following in the footsteps of your father and joining a union, and leaving behind youth’s wild days, It’s Closeness, It’s Easy embraces what comes next—the weight of all years, the quiet shifts, the reckoning with what remains. This record is many things. It captures the slow drift of time, the unnoticed shifts in a loved one—the creeping changes in mental health, the quiet pull of addiction, the kind of grief that settles in the bones rather than announces itself.

At its core, It’s Closeness, It’s Easy is about stepping into middle age and taking stock. It confronts the reality of living with the hand that’s been dealt and searching for meaning in what remains. It speaks to loss—the crushing weight of saying goodbye to a beloved 17 year old cat, the slow-motion grief of watching friends self-destruct, the inescapable passage of time as it bears down on aging parents and the self. But it also reflects the warmth of reconnection, the kind of love that never burns out but instead deepens. The feeling of picking up where things left off, untouched by the years in between.

While written over the course of two years, the recording process reflects a sense of immediacy. Rather than assembling songs piece by piece over time, the album took shape in singular, immersive sessions—less an act of construction, more an unveiling of something already waiting to take shape.

Rooted in a staunch DIY ethos, Wasluck handles every aspect of Planning For Burial project himself—recording the music, designing the artwork, and performing live as a one-man band. He books his own tours, ever and independent creative. This hands-on approach has led Planning for Burial to play hundreds of shows solidifying his place in the underground music scene. A defining moment came in 2018 when he performed at the Meltdown Festival in London, curated by Robert Smith of The Cure.

As of 2025 Planning For Burial has existed for 20 years. Wasluck’s debut full-length, Leaving (2009), was released on Enemies List Home Recordings, the in-house label of Have a Nice Life. In 2014, he joined The Flenser with Desideratum, becoming a cornerstone for the label’s connection to community and ethos. The follow-up, Below the House (2017), was met with widespread acclaim, further establishing Planning for Burial as a voice that’s singular and unique.

It’s Closeness, It’s Easy will be released on May 30th via The Flenser. Pre-order here + see Planning For Burial on tour all across North America.

Planning for Burial, on tour:

May 31 – Prepare The Ground, Toronto ON Canada (Live Scoring “The Phantom Carriage”)
June 08 – Guild Hall, Swoyersville PA (acoustic set)
June 13 – Ace of Cups, Columbus OH*
June 14 – Raccoon Motel – Davenport IA*
June 15 – Eroding Winds – Appleton WI*
June 16 – Subterranean, Chicago IL*
June 17 – Cactus Club, Milwaukee WI*
June 18 – 7th St. Entry, Minneapolis MN
June 19 – The Aquarium, Fargo ND
June 20 – Thirsty Street Brewing, Billings MT
June 21 – VFW 209, Missoula MT
June 23 – Black Lodge, Seattle WA%
June 24 – Twilight Cafe, Portland OR%
June 25 – Realm Arcade, Boise ID%
June 26 – Ace’s High Saloon, Salt Lake City UT
June 27 – The Holland Project, Reno NV
June 28 – Eli’s Mile High, Oakland CA+
June 29 – Zebulon, Los Angeles CA+
June 30 – Voodoo Brewing, Las Vegas NV
July 01 – Rebel Lounge, Phoenix AZ
July 02 – Long Hair Records, Albuquerque NM
July 03 – Hi-Dive, Denver CO £
July 04 – The Furnace, Wichita KS £
July 05 – Howdy, Kansas City MO £
July 06 – The Sanctuary, Oklahoma City OK
July 07 – Rubber Gloves, Denton TX
July 08 – Valhalla, Austin TX
July 09 – Whittier Bar, Tulsa OK
July 10 – Kerr, St. Louis MO
July 11 – Whirling Tiger, Louisville KY
July 12 – DRKMTTR, Nashville TN!
July 13 – Saturn, Birmingham AL!
July 14 – Eyedrum, Atlanta GA!
July 15 – Crowbar, Tampa FL
July 16 – Conduit, Winter Park FL
July 17 – The Boneyard, Chattanooga TN &
July 18 – Static Age Records, Asheville NC &
July 19 – Afterglow, Richmond VA &
August 08 – TV Eye, Ridgewood NY €
August 09 – PhilaMOCA, Philadelphia PA €
August 28 – TBA, NEPA €
August 29 – Eldorado, Troy NY
August 30 – Casa Del Popolo, Montreal QC
August 31 – Deep Cuts, Medford MA