Two years after Girl With basket of Fruit, Xiu Xiu have announced the release of a new album called Oh No which will be out on March 26th via Polyvinyl. According to Xiu Xiu’s Jamie Stewart, it was born from betrayal but now exists thanks to the “profound rediscovery of community and friendship.” It features collaborations with a wide plethora of artists including Sharon Van Etten, Chelsea Wolfe, Alice Bag, Haley Fohr of Circuit des Yeux, Owen Pallett, Twin Shadow, along with members of Deerhoof, Drab Majesty, Liars, Shearwater, and many more.

A Bottle of Rum” is the first excerpt which comes with the official video directed by Angela Seo. It features Liz Harris. According to Stewart: “About a year ago I bought a cheap bajo quinto, which is a 10 string low register guitar like instrument used in Tejano, conjunto and norteño musics. As it is a cheap one, only certain chords sound good on it. One of them, annoyingly, is the open ‘cowboy’ voicing of D major. When we started Xiu Xiu, founding member Cory McCulloch had a lot of rules for the band. One of them was we could never use this chord. It has become a creative game in the last few years to try and break some of these rules but in a way that respects that Cory had very good reasons for imposing them in the first place. I.e. in this voicing, D major is an insipid chord.” 

Stewart goes on to say, “I had been trying to write a song on this bajo quinto to no avail and then drunkenly (A Bottle of Rum) listened to Liz’s song, “Heavy Water/I’d Rather Be Sleeping.” A spark shone and feebly I tried to write something that, at least at first, sounded like it. I had asked Liz Harris, who is an old friend, if she would sing on this new record of duets. Initially I thought of her for another song but she specifically, although not knowing she had been the inspiration behind it in the first place, asked to be on this one. If the stars ever have aligned… well then.”

Watch it below.