It’s been a busy year for Pittsburgh indie singer-songwriter Zack Keim.

The Fox Chapel Area High School graduate, 28, released his second solo album, “Battery Lane,” in February, logged more than 100 shows around the country and completed a 10-concert tour of Spain.

“My music’s really big in Spain for some reason,” said Keim, who credited label support from his time with local garage rockers Nox Boys.

Keim will be playing his final hometown show of the year on Nov. 15, in a co-headlining concert with Gardener (who are making their Pittsburgh debut) at Club Cafe on the South Side, with locals PosterChild opening. It’ll be Keim’s first full band performance there, having opened up solo for J.D. Wilkes of the Legendary Shack Shakers as well as Peter Case of the Plimsouls in the past.

Although his album came out almost nine months ago, Keim got a nice boost when the Pittsburgh Penguins used his song “Colors” in their third-jersey reveal.

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The collaboration with the Penguins came with an assist from California-based songwriter Matt Costa, who co-wrote Keim’s “Better Days” on the new album. Costa connected him with a Penguins producer, and Keim said the team will be using several of his songs this year. When the third-jersey reveal happened, Keim didn’t know what to expect.

“It was pretty crazy because he didn’t really tell me any context,” Keim said with a laugh. “He’s just like, ‘Yeah, dude, I got a cool video that I’m playing.’ He was keeping me on my toes. I didn’t know. He said it was something big, but I didn’t know what it was, so it was cool.”

It had been eight years in between solo albums — his debut “First Step” came out in 2017 — but there was a Nox Boys album in 2019, as well as a move to Washington, D.C.

“I was just living my early 20s, I guess,” he said. “Now I’m trying to put out a record every year, and I just signed with management recently and really trying to go for it.”

All of the latest songs were written in D.C., except for “Better Days,” and the album’s title stems from his address in Washington. The album is influenced by a failed relationship as well as the death of his father.

“I wrote all these songs when I was going through a relationship, which I was pretty much going to get engaged with somebody that didn’t work out,” he said, “and then my dad wasn’t in great health, and then he died right before the record came out.”

With a move back to Pittsburgh in early 2022, Keim recorded the album at Jake Hanner’s Social Hill Sounds in Gibsonia, with producing from Hanner as well as Josh Sickels and Chad Monticue of Pittsburgh band Animal Scream. The album came out out on Super Sport Records, which is the label run by Caamp’s Evan Westfall.

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The track “Canyon” came out in 2022 and marked a shift in his sound.

“I think that I was just in a pivotal mode. I think before I was on a label and I feel like having label influence,” he said. “‘Canyon’ was inspired by just doing whatever I aspired to do as a songwriter. I took influence from Canned Heat’s ‘Going Up the Country.’ I wanted to do my own music without restrictions.”

As for the status of Nox Boys, which had formed while Keim was in high school at Fox Chapel and released two albums on renowned garage-punk label Get Hip Records?

“We said we’re on hiatus, but…” Keim said with a laugh. “We just grew up. I grew out of it. We started that band when we were 16. (Drummer) Sam (Berman) is doing his own thing, he’s in The Redlines, and I just wanted to do my own thing as well. I got burned out by just being one genre, being a garage band.”

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