Four decades after he and his band, Tommy Tutone, topped the charts with “867-5309/Jenny,” Jim Keller continues his prolific, late-career renaissance with his latest album, End Of The World. Recorded with Adam Minkoff (Graham Nash, Doyle Bramhall II) and co-written with Byron Isaacs (The Lumineers, Levon Helm), the record offers a wry, sardonic take on modern life, balancing sharp wit and earnest sincerity as it reckons with loss, mortality, resilience, and hope. The songs are lean and intoxicating, and the performances are punchy and raw, infusing Keller’s distinctive mix of pub rock, new wave, and power pop with a defiant optimism that insists on finding joy and beauty, even as the walls come tumbling down.

Born and raised in New Jersey, Keller found fame after moving to San Francisco, where he launched Tommy Tutone in the late 1970s. Despite their meteoric rise, the band was short-lived, and Keller soon found himself in the proverbial wilderness, struggling to make ends meet until he talked his way into a job with famed composer Philip Glass. For the next 25 years, Keller ran Glass’s publishing company, eventually managing his career outright in addition to working with luminaries like Tom Waits, Ravi Shankar, and Rufus Wainwright.

In 2009, Keller returned to performing and recording with Sunshine In My Pocket, the first in a series of critically acclaimed solo records that would garner profiles everywhere from NPR to The New Yorker.