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Is it too easy to joke that Wintersleep has been in hibernation for awhile? Probably, but it’s also just too fitting to not note. 

When I talk to the band’s lead singer on a video call, he’s on the other side of the country at his home in Halifax, gearing up to fly to the West Coast for the first time in awhile. 

“I guess it’s been about seven years since we’ve done a proper tour,” says Paul Murphy. “We’ve done one-offs and festivals and things like that, but we haven’t done a ‘get in the van and drive for three weeks tour,’ so it’s been fun to get back to that.”

Wintersleep, the Canadian folk rock outfit from Nova Scotia, recently got back from a trip through Europe and the UK in April. 

“It was pretty crazy,” says Murphy. “A lot of smaller venues, like loading down into basements or above weird places. It was a good way to get us back into shape, I guess.”

The shows in Canada promise to be a bit more high-profile. The five-piece band has sold out a bunch of shows across the country, including Vancouver’s Hollywood Theatre last night. 

The tour accompanies the band’s first album in seven years, Wishing Moon. The album features a lot of what fans have come to expect from the band—some foot-stomping folk songs mixed with some quieter, lyrically smart ballads, all of which feature expert instrumentation and Murphy’s wistful and warm voice. 

“Yeah, it’s been cool; people are definitely into the record,” Murphy says. “It feels like a little bit of a different landscape in terms of putting out an album. We don’t have a ton of radio play, we really lean on our live show and then the loyalty of the fan base, I guess. So it’s been really nice in that sense, getting back to playing shows and coming back to some of these places that we’ve taken quite a bit of a hiatus from.”

That’s not to say that Wintersleep hasn’t had a couple of bonafide hits in its time. After all, the band still hits some 100,000 streams on Spotify per month, and songs like “Weighty Ghost” and “Amerika” were everywhere when they came out. 

“Yeah, those songs had a bit of traction in the mainstream world, and that’s always good,” says Murphy, who notes that the latest album is getting a good amount of play on CBC. “They’ve always been really supportive.”

Even on a tour with a bunch of sold-out shows, Murphy is hoping that the band puts its best foot forward. “I guess it’s just about making sure that we have the right songs, because I think after a few years you take enough time off and you have to come back with your best foot forward,” he says. “It took us a little bit longer because we really wanted to make sure that it felt right.”