Portage la Prairie's Doc Walker released a new single yesterday, from their soon-to-be released album Weathervane.

It's called Heart of the Heartland, and lead singer Chris Thorsteinson says he and Dave Wasyliw wrote the song with two other writers from Toronto. He describes what it's about.

"Growing up in a small town," he says, "Or actually, growing up anywhere, and the memories of childhood, and what you remember, and what makes you feel good about it, when you think of home. You can live in Toronto, Calgary, Vancouver, or Transcona in Winnipeg. You don't have to be from MacDonald, or Westbourne, or small-town Portage to have those feelings."

Weathervane's Doc Walker's tenth album, and Thorsteinson admits even with that, writing songs doesn't get easier.

"You're not just throwing things in the dark anymore, you're not writing the song hoping it's going to work. When we wrote Beautiful Life, I knew I loved the song. Jason McCoy wrote Rocket Girl -- when we heard it, we didn't think it was ever going to be on radio, we just loved the song. But seeing the impact that these songs make, you can't try to plan it, but you definitely know that there's a responsibility there to write something that's going to connect with somebody."

Thorsteinson adds the tradition of recording at least one cover song continues -- this time they've picked the Faces' Oo-la-la.

"It's strange, because my wife knew it, and she's younger than I am. My son knew it, too, and he's 10! So it's one of those songs that everybody knows, but you don't have on your playlist. But we've got another song on the record called Just Fine, which is kind of a nice father-explaining-life song, so when we heard Oo-la-la, which is kind of the same thing, but more up-tempo and a cover song, we thought 'let's do a cover song.' "

You can find more about the new album here.