A pit bull puppy peeing off a balcony. Mounted antlers in the kitchen on a crooked nail. Pink boiled eggs stay afloat in the brine. For its dedicated audience, the North Carolina alt-country-meets- indie rock band Wednesday is an exemplar in evocative songwriting, where whole worlds are found in short lyrical lines.

And that says nothing of what they sound like. The most exciting band in contemporary indie rock is informed by Drive-By Truckers and Pavement in equal measure, a distinctive sonic fabric of lap steel, guitar fuzz, folksy and jagged vocals.

On Sept. 19, the band will release its sixth and most ambitious full-length, “Bleeds.”

“My songwriting is just better on this album,” Wednesday’s singer and songwriter Karly Hartzman explains. “Things are said more succinctly ... the immediacy of these songs was the main growth.”

Wednesday began as Hartzman’s solo project, evidenced in 2018’s sweet- sounding “yep definitely.” It became a full band on 2020’s “I Was Trying to Describe You to Someone,” a dive into guitar distortions, and 2021’s “Twin Plagues,” a further refinement of their “creek rock” sound. The lineup consists of Hartzman, bassist Ethan Baechtold, lap steel player Xandy Chelmis, guitarist Jake Lenderman and drummer Alan Miller.

Wednesday’s last album, 2023’s narrative “Rat Saw God,” was lauded partially for its uncanny ability to dive into the particularities and complications of Southern identity. “Bleeds” sharpens those tools.

“Originally, I was going to call it ‘Carolina Girl’ but my bandmates did not like that,” Hartzman jokes.

“Bleeds” comes from the explosive opening track, “Reality TV Argument Bleeds.” She likes how the band name and album title sound together — “ ‘Wednesday Bleeds,’ which I feel like I do, when I play music ... I’m almost, in a way, bloodletting and exorcising a demon.”

Lyrically, “Bleeds” features some of Wednesday’s best work — even in the revisiting of an older song, “Phish Pepsi,” that hilariously references both the jam band and the most disturbing movie released in 2010 — a kind of specificity born from Hartzman’s writing practices. During the pandemic, she and Lenderman “wrote 20 lines of writing each day.” She also takes notes of things her friends say and images that are affecting, to later collage them together in songs.

“Bleeds” manages cohesion across a variance of sound. “Wasp” is hard-core catharsis; lead single “Elderberry Wine” drops guitar noise for shimmery, fermented country. “Wound Up Here (By Holding On),” which references the Appalachian poet Evan Gray, is a pretty indie rock track about a hometown hero who drowns.

The quietest moment on the album, the plucked “The Way Love Goes,” was written as “a love song for Jake when we were still together. ‘Elderberry Wine’ as well.’ ” Hartzman explains. “ ‘Elderberry Wine’ is kind of talking about me noticing slight changes in a relationship.”

These are not breakup songs; they exist right before the point of dissolution. “Sweet song is a long con/ I drove ya to the airport with the E-brake on,” she sings on the latter.

Later: “Sometimes in my head I give up and/ Flip the board completely.”

“I’m understanding how sound creates emotion. That’s what I’m learning over time,” Hartzman says of her musical growth. “I’m also listening to more music with every year that passes. So, my understanding of what’s possible, or what I can be inspired by, shifts.”

Longtime fans of the band will find recurring themes and characters from past songs. “In a way, I’m writing the same songs over and over, but I’m just trying to make them better,” she says.

There is always more humanity to excavate. And often, those emotions, “they aren’t done with you,” she adds. “They’re not letting you go.”