Apart from their Mitski collaboration for John Cameron Mitchell’s galactic romance How To Talk To Girls At Parties, Xiu Xiu have stayed relatively quiet since the release of 2017’s FORGET. Today the noise-pop veterans are back with a new lineup including Swans’ Thor Harris to announce their new album Girl With Basket Of Fruit, a play on the title of a 16th century Caravaggio painting, and share its lead single and culty music video.

On FORGET, Xiu Xiu leaned away from some of their more grim and painful confrontations and created their catchiest, most centered pop record to date. Today’s “Scisssssssors” charges back into the band’s eccentric discomfort. The track, produced by Xiu Xiu’s own Angela Seo and Deerhoof’s Greg Saunier, is scattered and dissonant and thorny. The drums move frenzied and tribal over frontman Jamie Stewart’s possessed mutterings. “Light a candle/ Pull the handle/ You are erased,” he whispers. It all sounds like a dark, experimental ritual.

The Seo and Anna Liantes-directed video continues with the bizarre ceremony. Seo sprawls in a baby pool covered in white netting. She then stretches, does some sit ups, and pulls a string through the center of her tongue, letting the blood run down her chin. By the end, she’s bludgeoned with what appears to be a small cast iron skillet. Watch and listen below and check out the entire Girl With Basket Of Fruit’s tracklist.

TRACKLIST:
01 “Girl With Basket Of Fruit”
02 “It Comes Out as a Joke”
03 “Amargi ve Moo”
04 “Ice Cream Truck”
05 “Pumpkin Attack on Mommy and Daddy”
06 “The Wrong Thing”
07 “Mary Turner Mary Turner”
08 “Scisssssssors”
09 “Normal Love”

Girl With Basket Of Fruit is out 2/8 via Polyvinyl.

CREDIT: Shomei Tomatsu