“Crushes” includes cover songs of artists such as Tom Waits, Daniel Johnston, Mars Volta and more.

Jason Hammel from Mates of State explains, “We’ve been talking about doing a covers record for a long time. We’d hear a great song at 2 AM while driving the straight line from one part of Texas to the next, and all we’d want to do is play that song as if we had written it.

"There are so many artists we considered, some for the mere fact that they wrote a perfect song, some for nostalgia’s sake, some because more people need to hear them, some for the challenge, and some to shed a whole different light on a song: Our light… make it a duet, more optimistic or maybe less traditional.”