The Doors‘ guitarist Robby Krieger is back this month with new band, the Soul Savages, and a self-titled debut album. The group was formed at Krieger’s Love Street Studios in Glendale, Calif., and the “Robby Krieger and the Soul Savages” album’s tracks are entirely instrumental. Krieger tells us that the group allows him to explore music differently than he did with the Doors or on his solo albums: “In the past my jazz stuff has been more fusion-type jazz — just how many notes can you play in this amount of time? In this case it’s more funky, how funny can you be, and it’s more the feel of it. I think a lot of these songs could be, like, theme songs for TV shows or movies or whatever because they make you feel a certain way more than…It’s more feel than listening to how fast you can play or that type of thing.” :53 OC…type of thing

Joining the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer in the Soul Savages are: bassist Kevin “Brandino” Brandon, a Grammy and Emmy Award winner who worked with Krieger on his Singularity album in 2010 and has also played with Aretha Franklin, James Brown, Michael Jackson and Beyoncé; keyboardist Ed Roth, a Grammy nominee whose credits include Ringo Starr, Annie Lennon, Coolio and others; and drummer Franklin Vanderbilt, whose worked with Chaka Khan and Stanley Clarke and was most recently part of Lenny Kravitz‘s touring band.

Krieger and the Soul Savages has performed around the Los Angeles area. He’s hoping to take the group on tour this year.

Krieger has also recorded an all-instrumental reggae album with the late bassist Phil Chen that he hopes to release this summer.