Mitski – “Two Slow Dancers”

Bao Ngo

Mitski – “Two Slow Dancers”

Bao Ngo

Mitski is releasing her fifth album, Be The Cowboy, next week. We’ve heard two songs from it already, “Geyser,” and “Nobody,” and today she’s shared its third and presumably last single, “Two Slow Dancers.”

It’s the closing track on the album, a cinematic and lovely denouement that feels like an insular bubble resigned to the inevitability of popping. Here’s how Mitski frames the song: “They used to have something together that is no longer there and they’re trying to relive it in a dance, knowing that they’ll have to go home and go back to their lives.”

The song starts off minimally, just a warbled piano and Mitski’s voice, but builds to quite the sparkling finish. And Mitski’s lyrics are as considered and precise as ever: “It would be a hundred times easier if we were young again,” she sings. “But as it is, and it is, we’re just two dancers, last ones out.”

Listen to it below.

Be The Cowboy is out 8/17 via Dead Oceans. Pre-order it here.

more from New Music