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\n\tIn the year since Ian Munsick<\/a> last released a studio album, he has put his career through a near-wholesale reset. He\u2019s an independent artist now, working under his own label for the first time. In mid-September, he opened his own Western-themed bar, about as far from Nashville\u2019s Lower Broadway \u2014 the conventional home for such enterprises \u2014 as he can get. And, to hear Munsick tell it, he\u2019s never been more at peace since he dropped his new album, The Mountain Goat<\/em>, last month.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI\u2019ve been asking people their favorite tune on there, and getting all kinds of answers,\u201d the Wyoming native tells Rolling Stone<\/em>. \u201cEvery tune on the album is hit multiple times. That\u2019s always been my goal, to create a no-skip album that, from top to bottom, you can just press play and forget about your life for an hour.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tMunsick released The Mountain Goat<\/em> on Aug. 21 on his own West to the Rest Records, in partnership with the Triple Tigers label \u2014\u00a0his first independent venture after releasing three albums via Warner Records. The album features 15 tracks, of which 13 are original tunes co-written by Munsick, heavily bent toward the American West and its native culture. A pair of instrumental interludes rounds out the record.<\/p>\n \n\tThe Mountain Goat<\/em> finds Munsick playing it straight, with his voice front-and-center over melodies that are simple and stripped-down, especially in comparison to his 2025 project, Eagle Feather<\/a><\/em>. The record still has the pop edge that has defined Munsick\u2019s sound thus far, but if there were such a term as \u201croots pop,\u201d that\u2019s where this record would be found. Munsick chalks it up to the production process \u2014\u00a0he co-produced the album with Jeremy Spillman and Mike Robinson, working remotely out of home studios rather than a major recording space in Nashville, and played nine instruments across the record himself.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cBeing with a major label, they have a lot of artists that they\u2019re putting out music on every single week,\u201d Munsick says. \u201cThey have a huge team coming up with all these plans, but when it comes down to the nitty-gritty, you don\u2019t always know what you\u2019re going to get. So, the fact that we were able to be extremely active and have an intricate part of the release plan with our new independent label, it feels like a lean, mean operation.\u201d<\/p>\n