Breakout Montana folk duo Buffalo Traffic Jam return with their darkly moving new tune “Fool’s Gold,” out now on Arista Records. The sonically rich single arrives alongside a lyric video and will land on the Take Me Home EP.
Listen to “Fool’s Gold” HERE.
Watch the “Fool’s Gold” lyric video HERE.
Produced by Ryan Hadlock (The Lumineers, Brandi Carlile, Vance Joy) and written by Buffalo Traffic Jam bandmates Frankie Cassidy and Nathan Ross, “Fool’s Gold” takes listeners on a journey. Opening on gentle picking and pretty atmosphere, the song feels full of promise at first as Frankie issues a rallying cry, “Whaddaya say we leave tonight, we could leave it all behind.” But as the rhythm picks up and cello enters, looming like an ominous cloud, we realize the narrator is in a bad place — lost and desperate: “Lovers talk late at night, doin’ drugs ease my mind / I’m not alright / You were there, now you’re gone, never thought you were wrong / We don’t have much time.” He’s still searching when the song comes to a dramatic close.
Frankie spoke on the single’s theme:
“Sometimes what you want is not actually what you need. A lot of times all we can think about is things in life that we think we can’t live without. The mind likes to play tricks on us and put false hopes in our heart. ‘Fool’s Gold’ explores these ideas and tells the story of someone who thinks they know exactly what they need, when all they really needed was some time to themselves.”
He also elaborated on the song’s creation:
“I was home alone in Bozeman for about a week and a half and it was weird being in this empty house with no one there for so long. I began to get rather lonely and became obsessed with this idea and wrote and produced a demo of it in one night. I brought it to Nathan and he added some awesome mandolin lines to it. We then took it to Ryan in Washington State and he really helped bring the song to life by bringing in session players on cello, drums, and bass.”
“Fool’s Gold” is the second single to come from the forthcoming Take Me Home. Buffalo Traffic Jam made their Arista Records debut with the gorgeous and deeply cathartic “Comfort in Misery,” a song about the ruts we fall into when we’re in need of some healing. The track landed on Spotify’s hotly tipped Fresh Folk playlist and picked up praise from Melodic Mag, who hailed it as, “A compelling combination of heartfelt lyrics and emotive folk.”
Before that came a pair of moving 2025 cuts — the expansive “Milestone” and the propulsive “Strangers Now” — and Buffalo Traffic Jam‘s November breakthrough, “Forgot Your Roots,” a heart-wrenching mix of emotional rawness and cinematic grandeur. Following their 2024 self-titled debut EP, that song felt like a culmination of something that had been brewing since they came together as Montana State University students united by a love for storytelling, the beauty of acoustic sound, and the natural wonder surrounding them in Big Sky Country.
About Buffalo Traffic Jam
Buffalo Traffic Jam is a folk band born in the heart of Bozeman, MT, where its members, Frankie Cassidy and Nathan Ross, first crossed paths as students at Montana State University. United by a love for storytelling and the raw beauty of acoustic sound, they began crafting music that evokes wide-open landscapes and the emotions that live quietly beneath the surface of everyday life. The result was a self-titled debut EP followed by singles “Rescue Me” and “Forgot Your Roots,” the latter of which saw the band gain their first bit of online momentum and led to them signing with Arista Records. With rich harmonies, stripped-down instrumentation, and vocals that make you feel — whether it’s longing, joy, or that bittersweet in-between — Buffalo Traffic Jam creates songs that linger long after the last chord fades. Their music is as much about atmosphere as it is about melody, rooted in folk traditions but carried forward by a modern emotional edge. They’ve released additional singles in 2025, including “Strangers Now” and “Milestone,” and are playing their first festivals (Montana’s Under the Big Sky, Utah’s Red West Festival) before heading out on tour with rising country singer-songwriter Dylan Gossett. From dorm-room jam sessions to packed local venues, Buffalo Traffic Jam stays true to their roots: authenticity, friendship, and the natural beauty that first brought them together in Montana.
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