Yeah Yeah Yeahs have come roaring back. After a nine year absence, they released the new single “Spitting Off the Edge of the World” a few months ago, which featured Perfume Genius and found the band back in striking form after 2013’s underwhelming Mosquito.
Their upcoming album, Cool It Down, is due out September 30 via Secretly Canadian (the band’s first for the label), and it promises to be something truly special. For our next glimpse into the record, the band has shared “Burning”, a track inspired by The Four Seasons’ “Beggin” and filled with looping piano, cinematic strings, serrated guitar lines, and Karen O’s entrancing vocals. It’s a fucking jam — four minutes of rock and roll that could fill both dancefloors and stadiums with equal ease.
“Back when I was 19 living in the east village, one night a roommate dragged me out of the apartment for an impromptu drink across the street,” recalls Karen O, “I left a votive candle burning on a plastic yaffa block which in my absence set flame to my room. Within an hour and a half of having one drink down the block firefighters had come and gone extinguishing the fire, I came home to find that a natural disaster had occurred (to my room) and most of my stuff, lost in the flames. All electronic goods were melted and demolished like my laptop, cameras etc. but oddly enough the items that held the most sentimental value remained intact like sketchbooks, a favorite sweater with hearts across the chest, and photographs. I had photos of my parents in their youth where the fire burnt around the two of them as if there was some intangible force field protecting them, many photos like that, mysteriously leaving the beloved subjects untouched.”
She continues: “If the world is on fire I hope the most beloved stay protected and that we do all we can to protect what we cherish most in this life. ‘Burning’ is a song about that feeling, smoke signals for the soul. Begging to cool it down, just doing it the best we know how. Nick and I nodded to Frankie Valli’s ‘Begging’, with the line ‘oooh lay your red hand on me baby.’ We’ve cut a rug to many a soulful sixties bangers in our day, it was in our DNA by the time we wrote ‘Burning’.”
Listen to the song below.
Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ new album, Cool It Down, is due out September 30 via Secretly Canadian. Keep up with the band on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
