Last month, Casey Crescenzo tweeted that he'd finished vocals for a new record. Three weeks later, The Dear Hunter announced it would be going on tour in December. The band's website went down the next day, and fans knew something big was coming. Fans refreshed the page over the next hour, waiting for the announcement they knew had to come.

The site came back up not much later with a note from Casey, a trailer for a new EP, and a new cover image: a handprint made from the rings of a tree, captioned, "All Is As All Should Be." The note was short and cryptic, explaining only that this EP directly introduced friends and fans "into the creative process," so that the band might become "a conduit for their hearts and minds." Though the note doesn't elaborate on how this collaboration happened, fans weren't going to let that stop them from speculating. It's rare that The Dear Hunter releases an album without some kind of theme, something that separates it from the rest. The Acts tell a story, Color Spectrum turns colors to songs, All Is As All Should Be would most likely join its songs in some way or another.

After piecing the clues left on The Dear Hunter's website with accounts by the fans that worked on this project, what we know now is this: Fans submitted song prompts, the band collaborated with them to turn those prompts into music, and recorded the finished song at the fans' houses between shows during the Final Act Tour. What those prompts were and how the band transformed them will be revealed with the album's release in December. All we have to go on now are the previews heard throughout the trailer and the tracklist: six songs, titled, "The Right Wrong," "Blame Paradise," "Beyond the Pale," "Shake Me (Awake)," "Witness Me," and "All Is As All Should Be." Each song is previewed for about ten seconds in the trailer, some with that good Act V feel, others with a new flavor.

With all this in mind, the final line of Casey's note makes more sense. "While every single one of you is wholly unique, this EP, and these people, represent the extended family of The Dear Hunter - all of you leaving a fingerprint on these songs, and this project." We'll have to wait until December to see how those fingerprints come out.

All Is As All Should Be will be released December 1, 2017. Watch the EP trailer below: