Penny and Sparrow make the hard questions look easy on “Breakdown,” an intimate, honest, and playful indie folk confessional – and the final single taken off their long-awaited eighth album, ‘Lefty.’
“Breakdown” – Penny and Sparrow
We can never know for sure if we’ll be accepted for who we are by those around us.
But we can sure as heck try to find out. Everyone deserves to be loved and accepted unconditionally: Sometimes you just cross your fingers, hoping on a wing and a prayer that the cracks don’t show – but then again, pretending to be someone you’re not never helped anybody. Better to just be your true self, which is exactly how Penny and Sparrow approach the situation on their latest single, asking point-blank: If I have a breakdown, while I’m gone, will you still love me?
An intimate indie folk confessional, “Breakdown” asks the hard questions without complication or over-scrutiny. It’s honest and direct, real and raw – a beautiful display of the human condition.

If I have a breakdown, while I’m gone
If I have a breakdown, while I’m gone
Will you still love me?
I might you know?
But hey I still got to go
What if I cry every show
And it’s hey look out below?
Atwood Magazine is proud to be premiering “Breakdown,” the seventh (and final) single taken off Penny and Sparrow’s eighth studio album, Lefty (out January 31st, 2025 via I Love You / Thirty Tigers). The highly anticipated follow-up to the duo’s 2022 record Olly Olly – praised by Atwood as “uplifting and free-spirited” upon its release – has been self-described as a “sprawling and dreamy, raw and earnest 20-track odyssey through styles and moods and ideas.”
“Lefty is a long collection of both real and made-up things,” Penny and Sparrow’s Andy Baxter and Kyle Jahnke share.
“We wrote poetry, true stories, literary fan fiction, horror, erotica, slice-of-life vignettes, dream scenarios, saloon conversations, elegies, a toast, a few confessions and at least two love letters.”
“All of them belong together because each one is an extension of us, of the things we love. We are the ties that bind Lefty.”
If I have a breakdown, while I’m gone
If I have a breakdown,
I hope that you still love me
I hope that you still love me
If I have a breakdown, while I’m gone
If I have a breakdown, while I’m gone
Will you still love me?
Tender and warm, yet brutally candid and vulnerable all at once, “Breakdown” is a charming unveiling of a brooding, hopeful heart. With acoustic guitars confidently strumming and drums gently pounding around them, the duo sing about anxiety in the face of budding, burgeoning romance.
“‘Breakdown’ is what it sounds like to fall in love while having a panic attack,” Baxter and Jahnke tell Atwood Magazine. “It’s raucous and fun and nerve wracking, like watching a massive Rube-Goldberg machine with a high stake ending. Will you get stabbed in the heart or win a life with the beautiful human you’re infatuated with? The only way to find out is to trigger the mechanism and watch.”
I’m on my knees
Panic makes it hard to breathe
And if you’re still into me
Then this juice is worth the squeeze
I can be a rube-Goldberg machine
I can overcomplicate a thing
I can make the dumb shit interesting
All it’s gonna take is all your patience
I CAN BE A LOT

Despite what are obviously intense and overwhelming emotions, Penny and Sparrow keep “Breakdown” on the lighter side.
The song is playful and welcoming, honest and earnest: Fun enough to enjoy on its own merits, without feeling like there’s a specially-prescribed weight pulling us in any one direction. As the final preview off Lefty, it’s also a heartwarming reminder of the intimate, sincere spaces Penny and Sparrow have built over the past fifteen years – and a reminder to stream the album upon its release this Friday.
Until then, stream “Breakdown” exclusively on Atwood Magazine!
I hope, I hope that you still love me
I hope, I hope that you still love me
I hope, I hope that you still love me
I hope, I hope that you still love me
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:: stream/purchase Lefty here ::
:: connect with Penny and Sparrow here ::
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“Breakdown” – Penny and Sparrow
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