Embellished with triumphant horns and a chorus that sounds like it could have come straight from an early Strokes track, ‘Kyoto’ sees Bridgers doing what she does best: pairing devastating lyrical tropes with her distinctive tongue-in-cheek fuck-it attitude.
It marks a minor departure from Bridgers typically slow sound, which she acknowledged in a statement explaining the track today – “This song is about impostor syndrome. About being in Japan for the first time, somewhere I’ve always wanted to go, and playing my music to people who want to hear it, feeling like I’m living someone else’s life. I dissociate when bad things happen to me, but also when good things happen. It can feel like I’m performing what I think I’m supposed to be like. I wrote this one as a ballad first, but at that point I was so sick of recording slow songs, it turned into this.”
‘Kyoto’ is also paired with a new music video that depicts Bridgers doing her thing against a green screen of various scenes from Japan after the planned trip to shoot the video in March was called off for obvious reasons. Watch it below.
Slated for release via Dead Oceans / Inertia Music on Friday June 19, Bridger’s second record Punisher is set to feature appearances from a gamut of keynote names in indie, including boygenius collaborators Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus and Better Oblivion Community Center bandmate Conor Orbest, as well as Warpaint bassist Jenny Lee Lindberg, Blake Mills, Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Nick Zinner and legendary drummer Jim Keltner. Needless to say, we’re super stoked to hear this one.
Punisher comes out via Dead Oceans / Inertia Music on Friday June 19. Preorder the record here.