Santa Cruz is a studio album by Pedro the Lion. Released on June 7, 2024 it is the seventh Pedro the Lion LP and forms their third in a planned five album arc following 2019's Phoenix and 2022's Havasu. Santa Cruz forms part of an autobiographical telling of the lead singer David Bazan's adolescence, focusing on a year spent in Santa Cruz, California.
David said that the timeline for this album should overlap with the next album in the set which will be called Paradise named after the city of the same name in California about three hours away. This appears to be a difference from the prior albums where he would leave his old city behind so that he could completely move to the new one.
The cover art for Santa Cruz features abstract snippets of various places in Santa Cruz, California. This is similar to the way the previous albums in the set looked each with different color schemes. Many fans noticed that these abstract pieces are now doing more than function as standalone snippets overlaying each other now. Starting with the Santa Cruz album they now appear to be forming the basic features of someone's face.
All three albums in the set feature small photos of young David Bazan mixed in with the artwork. As of Santa Cruz there appears to be more going on with a person on the cover rather than just landscapes and other inanimate objects.
There have been videos made for "Modesto," "Don't Cry Now," and "Spend Time."
Around the time the album came out David set up a playlist on streaming platforms to list some of the songs he listened to when Santa Cruz takes place. The song Modesto references Grandaddy. Little Help recalls the first time he listened to the Beatles White Album. Particularly the song Birthday which he listened to, coincidentally, on his very own birthday.
David took a major performance change on the tour promoting Santa Cruz by becoming the band's drummer instead of the bass player. Bazan previously sung about his love of playing the drums on the song "First Drum Set" from Havasu. At the beginning of the Santa Cruz tour the song "Tall Pines" often lead straight into "Model Homes" off Phoenix. This further established the multiple ways Phoenix, Havasu, and Santa Cruz work together both musically and lyrically.
Writing for NPR, Ann Powers described Santa Cruz as the boldest of Pedro the Lion's most recent albums. She wrote that Bazan's voice "has never been more relaxed and evocative" and drew comparisons with other albums featuring songwriters' explorations of their own youths such as The Sunset Tree (The Mountain Goats), Carrie & Lowell (Sufjan Stevens) and good kid, m.A.A.d city (Kendrick Lamar).