Ohio Players is The Black Keys' fourth album in five years, a momentum with a simple explanation, Auerbach says: "We never stopped recording." There was his and Carney's reunion, after a five-year hiatus, on 2019's "Let's Rock", then the 2021 blast of Mississippi-hill-country covers, Delta Kream. A rapid-fire follow-up of new originals, 2022's Dropout Boogie, featured the duo working with outside writers for the first time: Greg Cartwright of Memphis rockers Reigning Sound and Angelo Petraglia, who has worked with Kings of Leon and the teenage Taylor Swift.