The Shepherd's Dog

Beam described the method on Song Exploder: Deck would make a loop, Beam would play guitar over it, and they built everything else one track at a time, an approach he likened to working on a painting. He later told Premier Guitar the band had played to a click track, which he felt was not right for him. Sub Pop's notes name Tom Waits's Swordfishtrombones as an inspiration, and Beam linked the record to his political confusion after Bush's re-election. He painted the artwork, and the digipak folds out into a lyric poster.

It debuted at 24 on the Billboard 200 and reached 2 on the independent chart. It scored 84 on Metacritic and 8.6 from Pitchfork, which ranked it 36th of 2007, and Paste put it tenth. The Skinny's Hamza Khan called it one of the year's best. Boy with a Coin, Lovesong of the Buzzard and Flightless Bird, American Mouth were released as singles. For its tenth anniversary, Archive Series Volume No. 4 (2017) collected acoustic recordings of the songs.