for KING & COUNTRY’s fourth studio project, What Are We Waiting For?, asks a pivotal question in a post-pandemic world. Brothers Joel and Luke Smallbone provide the answer across 13 original tracks that confront relevant issues and confirm the duo’s commitment to community, diversity and family. Set against a sonic backdrop painted by the Platinum-selling group’s lush, vivid pop, the collection features cameos from tourmate Dante Bowe, Kirk Franklin and Tori Kelly and includes barrier-breaking single “Relate,” awe-inspiring “Love Me Like I Am” and unifying No. 1 hit “TOGETHER.”

Joel Smallbone shared with us the backstory on their new record which experientially reflects for KING & COUNTRY, their family, and the world.

You’ve said this project “confirms the duo’s commitment to community, diversity and family.” Tell us more about this commitment and also why you chose to pose the album title as a question.

Unfortunately, and in some ways, I say this sensitively, fortunately, we were able to be home for the last two albums while we were recording and writing. I say fortunately and unfortunately because that was due to the pandemic.

While it is kind of you to say that we have kept a finger on the pulse, and it’s encouraging because we do make every effort to stay in it, the last two years have given us an incredible amount of content to pull from, as far as worldwide culture, what we’ve all faced in this universal suffering, political tension, racial division, and so on.

Our attempt is to always write with a sense of hopefulness, but also a sense of grit and honesty as to where we find ourselves as individuals, where our families find ourselves, and where it seems the world finds itself.

What Are We Waiting For? is very much that. I feel it’s very grounded in what we just walked through and in many ways, how we should find our way forward. And we chose to pose it as a question as sort of a charge to ourselves and to others.

You all dedicate “Unsung Hero” to your parents — tell us about growing up in a large family and how it’s affected your families now, your faith, and your mission as a duo.

Luke and I grew up in a very musical family and we traveled with our sister, Rebecca St. James, for many years as youngsters. We were the road crew and did stage managing and background vocals. In many ways, we often say that music chose us more than we chose music.

I think that the blessing of doing music together as family is that you are going to figure out ways to resolve your conflict because you are family and you’ve got to for you to be able to have a good family relationship. You’ve got to work out even your own working relationship and I think that’s a gift. And being able to create a song like “Unsung Hero” that is really a tribute to our parents and a way of honoring them in a time that people seem to want to move on from their parents and their childhood. We wanted to take a moment to thank them.

“Love Me Like I Am” is an admission of the difficulty of believing in grace that gives without condition. Do you think we can truly comprehend God’s all-encompassing love and mercy in this life, or is it more that we can simply accept the fact we might never fully comprehend it, and yet, can still believe it?

I think that it connects so much to our humanity of God. So often in Western mentality it’s": “I am only worth what I produce” and we’ve all, myself included, bought into this construct at varying levels.

The more we can come to this place of going: “I am. I exist and I am and therefore, I have inherent worth and inherent meaning,” it seems to change the way we look at God, others, and ourselves.

We’re not looking at others for what they can do for us anymore, at God as being angry because we are not good enough, or looking at ourselves either with a sense of pride because we’re better than other people or a sense of shame because we’re not as good as other people. We’re able to look at ourselves and just inherently be at peace and then operate from a place of peace versus operating from a place of striving and dissatisfaction. “Love Me Like I Am,” which ironically came to me in my sleep, I think is a heart cry both on a human level, human to human, as well as God to human.

It is worth celebrating those that do love us as we are, or like we are, and that there is a God that does the same.

Tell us about working with Dante Bowe, Kirk Franklin and Tori Kelly on this record. What did they each individually bring to this project musically and spiritually?

We began the album process during the pandemic and that was when we had the opportunity to collaborate in such a lovely way with Tori and Kirk so it began there. We had worked on “TOGETHER” for years previously and then ran into Kirk at the Grammy’s in 2020 and mentioned wanting to work on something together, so it felt right to bring back this song. And then once we had it together we wanted a female voice on it as well, and we asked Tori and she came back in just a few days with her vocals, and just came together we feel perfectly.

Then we had worked on this song “Unity” which we also felt needed a rich, gravely voice that could bring what the song really needs, and had connected with Dante here in town, and started to become friends, so that one really came together seamlessly as well. The Sleeping at Last feature, we’ve just always been massive fans, so when the idea came up with that and Matt Hales producing we were thrilled.

What do you all hope for most as these songs begin to reach the Church?

Our hope is that people will listen to this project and will take away a little bit of what’s important in life. The album is called What Are We Waiting For? because I think we’re all waiting for something, some sort of lightbulb to go off for us to make certain decisions.

I think our hope is that maybe we won’t wait so long to do those things that we know instinctually we should do, but we hold back for whatever reason. I think our hope is that we’ll jump into it.

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