Walter Mitty and His Makeshift Orchestra

Of all the ways for a band to rise out of a decade of silence, Walter Mitty and His Makeshift Orchestra sent their fans on a real life treasure hunt for their new album, Yikes Almighty. The album, an existential crisis set to sugary melodies, cowboy chords and children’s toy instruments, was dubbed to a single cassette and buried in a cave in the California desert. The band released a cryptic video that served as the treasure map with the message “if you find it, we will release it.”

Though the bedroom folk punk outfit has not released music in 11 years, in actuality they have been consistently releasing and touring under their genre-defying umbrella name, Walter Etc. When asked why the band is split into two identities, singer/songwriter, Dustin Cole Hayes, aka Walter, responded, “my life is already such a mess, I decided I’d keep adding to the chaos.” It is Hayes’s cut-your-own-ear-off artistic sincerity that has made the Walter-verse and their art collective, Making New Enemies, fertile grounds for such strong mythology and deep connections. Yikes Almighty recounts a year of Hayes’s wandering, searching for home and stability, both physically and philosophically. It was released on July 18, 2025 via Lauren Records.