DEFTONES Frontman's ††† Project Streaming New Song

††† (CROSSES) — DEFTONES frontman Chino Moreno's latest project with FAR guitarist Shaun Lopez — will release its second EP, "††", on January 24. A song from the effort, "Prurien†", is available for streaming at RollingStone.com.

Lopez tells RollingStone.com that ††† (CROSSES)'s newest song "is one of about 20 or so we've written, and the initial idea was almost metal. It ultimately morphed into something opposite of that — less aggressive, still big and resonating."

††† (CROSSES) has announced a series of four intimate California shows in support of the new album, starting in Pomona on January 31 and wrapping up in San Francisco on February 4.

In a recent interview with ChinaShop, Moreno stated about how ††† (CROSSES) came together, "I remember I mentioned to [Shaun] one day when we were hanging out, y'know, 'We should make a record together.' It just so happened that when I moved to L.A. I ended up living a few blocks away from him. I was down here working on recording some vocals with Shaun. We just clicked. We listened to a lot of the same music. We've always worked well together. With this project in particular, I met [guitarist] Chuck over at Shaun's house. Chuck was working on some of his solo stuff. I don't know when they started working together, but they said they were working on a project together and asked if I was interested in contributing vocals. Whenever they were working, I'd just ride my bike over there. A couple different times, I was just like, 'Let me try singing on this,' and they were like, 'OK, cool.' I'd just go in and throw in a bunch of ideas. Pretty soon they got rid of the idea of getting a bunch of different singers together. We just started working on the record together. And any time I had a break, I'd just head on over there to see what was going on and stuff. This started maybe 9 months ago, and I'd been on tour for a year and a half. I'd just spend some time over at his studio when I could."

When asked if there is somebody who's a sort of designated songwriter, Chino said, "You'd have to ask these guys about that. Most of the songs were written before I came in. I just talked to them and said, y'know, 'I really like this, can I sing on it?' I know Chuck will come in with a bunch of chord progressions. He'll send me a couple chord progressions, with a really lo-fi beat going on, and you can pretty much hear the beat in there, and send it to me, sort of like, 'See what you can come up with for this.' And him and Shaun will work on laying out the rest of the music. When he gives you a copy of the music, do you pretty much get an idea of what to sing. Shaun says that when he's writing a lot of the time, he already has in mind what I'm going to sing, and will sometimes plan it around that. It almost seems like, I'm right there with it. I'm never overwhelmed, like, 'Wow, what am I going to do with this?”' It just seems pretty natural. I'll just go in and throw out melodies."