Despite rumors to the contrary, the Band Perry are not going pop. But they are taking a turn for the positive.

At a Nashville party celebrating their new country single “Comeback Kid” last week, the Grammy-winning trio gave us hints about their next album. “The key theme that runs through it is being unified together,” Neil Perry told Rolling Stone Country. “That’s a new one for us. The second album was underdog-ness. . . a little angsty. But this one is about seeing the positive and being unified in what you want in life. In this day and age with a lot of scary things going on in the world, this is a good time for people to hear that message.”

“Comeback Kid” delivers that message with a lyrically powerful, sonically ethereal punch. It’s their first single since last summer’s pop-leaning “Live Forever,” which failed to crack the country charts’ Top 20 and had tongues wagging about a possible permanent genre leap. But the boomerang came with “Comeback Kid,” which is not only a throwback to their earliest catalog but even samples their breakout 2010 hit, “If I Die Young.” The song, written and co-produced by the three Perry siblings, is about rising up from a challenging situation and becoming better for it.

“That was our real-life story over the past 12 months,” says lead singer Kimberly Perry. “We’ve gone through this amazing journey: We’ve moved label homes [from Big Machine Label Group to Interscope]. We have spent a lot of time working and honing in the sound that we want to bring to our fans.

“There were a lot of voices out there in our moment of radio silence,” she continues, “trying to tell their version of our story that was just not accurate – especially those who go, ‘The Band Perry has left country radio. They’re going pop.’ Well that never came from our mouths. So it’s very important now that we have ‘Comeback Kid.’ We want our actions to speak louder than our words. Here’s a song. We prove it!”

Kimberly, Neil and Reid Perry are headed to Rio de Janeiro this week to sing “Comeback Kid” at the Olympics. NBC’s Today show will broadcast the performance this Thursday, August 11th. The Band Perry’s “Live Forever” got a bit of a second life after it was adopted as Team U.S.A.’s theme song for the summer games.

– Rolling Stones