In a few weeks, the Australian synth-rock veterans Cut Copy will follow up 2017’s Haiku From Zero with a new album called Freeze, Melt. Frontman Dan Whitford, now living in Copenhagen, wrote most of the new album, and he returned to Australia before the pandemic to record it with his bandmates. The first two singles, “Love Is All We Share” and “Cold Water,” presented a more austere and internal take on the Cut Copy sound. But today, the band has shared a new jam that’s more reminiscent of their old festival-sized sweep.

“Like Breaking Glass,” Cut Copy’s latest, is a percolating synthpop tune with a grand-gesture chorus and a whole lot of big, twinkly oscillations. The song has a bit of the contemplative grace of the other new Cut Copy tracks, but it also has the big hooks and the bigger drum sounds that you might remember from In Ghost Colours and Zonoscope. Check it out below.

Talking to Rolling Stone Australia, Dan Whitford said this about “Like Breaking Glass”:

In the beginning, “Like Breaking Glass” started out as a completely different track. Before one weekend, I was mucking around in the studio with just a drum beat and an acid bassline.

I never managed to finish it, but when I came back to it the next week there was something about that beat that felt compelling, so I started writing a song over the top of it.

It is about the conflicted feelings of a relationship that has begun to unravel. Where sometimes against all logic, you discover that affections run deep just as a breakup becomes inevitable.

It was also one of my favourite songs working in the studio with the band when we crafted the middle section of the song comprising of weird delay effects, off-beat drum hits, and metallic clangs where Mitchell [Scott] was throwing a box of metal objects around the room, and we stood there recording him.

Freeze, Melt is out 8/21 on Cutters Records/The Orchard.