After helping fellow Minnesota expat John Mark Nelson finish off his so-called Quarantine Chorale track last month while they're both holed up in Los Angeles, Dan Wilson has now released a song of his own in response to the coronavirus crisis. And as can usually be expected of the Semisonic frontman, it's a contemplative and hopeful one.

Wilson dropped "The Real Question" over the weekend, recorded in isolation with Nelson's help. The light, organ-tinged song was posted with a lyric video (see below) highlighting the post-quarantine-dreaming lines such as, "If we make it, you and I have to promise to make new promises."

Wilson explained the writing of the song in a message featured on his website along with the single:

"I wrote 'The Real Question' two weeks ago when the strangeness and the dread of our self-quarantine was sinking in. Even as we were all sharing the same scary short-term fears about the epidemic, I also was thinking, 'What happens if we make it through this? How will our lives be changed? How will my life be changed? Will a lot of us feel the impulse to renew or revise our agreements with lovers, family, community, country?' In some ways I hope so. So I wrote this song about those questions."

"The Real Question" is one in a long line of steady singles Wilson has been releasing on a near-monthly basis over the past year-plus. His last one, "Red Light," was co-written with Jenny Owen Youngs and Ethan Gruska after discovering the master tapes for Semisonic's and Trip Shakespeare's albums were lost in the massive fire on the backlots of Universal Studios in 2008.

When we caught up with Wilson in Los Angeles this time last year, the St. Louis Park native pledged to keep dropping his own tunes while continuing to co-wrote with other artists (the new Phantogram album has three of his collaborations). "I fell in love with the idea of just letting songs out into the world when they happen," he explained.

Riemenschneider, Chris, Star Tribune
Dan Wilson recorded his new single at home in Los Angeles.

Seems like an especially good idea under current circumstances.