US psych rockers Shearwater have released a video for their brand new single Xenarthran, which you can watch in full below.
It's taken form the band's upcoming album The Great Awakening, the band's first new album for six years, which will be released through the band’s own Polyborus label in partnership with Secretly Distribution on June 10.
"Xenarthrans are the ‘strange-jointed’ mammals, which mostly live in South America: armadillos, anteaters, and sloths," explains frontman Jonathan Meiburg. "Only one species of armadillo has wandered up to the southern U.S., and while we were recording The Great Awakening in Texas, I often saw them scurrying dimly through fields at dusk or snuffling in the mud after a rainstorm, and I couldn't help admiring them. They'd walked thousands of miles on their wispy little feet, long noses to the ground, trundling into alien landscapes filled with unfamiliar dangers.
“This song, and Emily's eerie video, aren't about armadillos, exactly - but they are about making your way through the dark spaces of a menacing but still very beautiful world. The roaring sounds near the end are howler monkeys I recorded in Guyana.”
The new album, produced by the band and Dan Duszynski (Loma), takes a more reflective route than 2016's Jet Plane And Oxbow which was released on Sub Pop. Influenced by Meiburg's own journey in writing the acclaimed A Most Remarkable Creature: The Hidden Life And Epic Journey Of The World's Smartest Birds of Prey, in which explores the lives and histories of the crow-like South American falcons called caracaras (social, curious, intelligent birds that have been mostly ignored by scientists).
The Great Awakening features field recordings from Meiburg's own travels and you can view the album artwork and tracklisting below.
Pre-order The Great Awakening.
Buy the latest issue of Prog Magazine .
Shearwater: The Great Awakening
1. Highgate
2. No Reason
3. Xenarthran
4. Laguna Seca
5. Everyone You Touch
6. Empty Orchestra
7. Milkweed
8. Detritivore
9. Aqaba
10. There Goes The Sun
11. Wind Is Love
