Papa’s Boat, the new album from Dana & Alden, is one that speaks to the Eugene, OR duo’s earliest memories and furthest travels: an eclectic mix of familial ties, friends new and old, and moments of musical ascension. It is an album that finds the group, Dana and Alden McWayne, stepping into their creative ambitions with a boldness and sensitivity like never before.

Over 2023’s Quiet Music For Young People and 2025’s Speedo, Dana and Alden established an eclectic, genre-agnostic sound drawn from their omnivorous musical upbringing — built on Dana’s saxophone and Alden’s drums, rooted in jazz, but pulling strains from indie, pop, rap, funk, and more.

That musical wanderlust is something they credit to their maternal grandfather.

Affectionately known as Papa, he was the kind of person others naturally gravitate towards. Always an eccentric, he was a retired engineer involved in manufacturing the first Fairchild semiconductors and a recreational sailor. It was a photograph from one of his trips to Asia that inspired Papa’s Boat. In the image Papa is wearing tattered jorts and looking out across the horizon. Next to him is his boat, named Sŵn y Môr after the Welsh translation of “Sound of the Sea.”

The result is an album that escapes landlocked rigidity for something more open, free, and expressive. An album in Papa’s image.