New Skin is the debut album of CRX a new project for STROKES lead guitarist Nick Valensi. The urge to begin a new project came from a primal place for Valensi, he just wanted to play. "I was at a place where I got really hungry to perform in front of audiences, and do things a little more simply," Valensi says. "The Strokes don't play that often anymore, and when we do it's awesome, but it got to the point where I needed to balance that out with a project I could take on tour whenever I wanted to. And the idea of playing clubs again was really exciting to me." But Valensi couldn't start playing until he'd written some songs, and he realized he'd have to finally embrace an aspect of performing he'd resisted up until that point -- singing. Last summer, he just dug in, grabbing whatever spare time he had to record demos on his laptop at home. "It was a learning process," says Valensi. "It took me some time to figure out how my voice sounds most natural, and to think about what I wanted to say."