Mitski Announces New Album Laurel Hell, Shares New Song “The Only Heartbreaker”: Listen

Mitski is back. Today, she’s announced her new album Laurel Hell, which is out February 4 via Dead Oceans. The album was recorded with her longtime producer Patrick Hyland. It includes the previously shared single “Working for the Knife,” plus a new song released today called “The Only Heartbreaker.” The track, co-written with Semisonic’s Dan Wilson, is accompanied by a music video co-directed by Maegan Houang and Jeff Desom. Watch it below.

“I needed love songs about real relationships that are not power struggles to be won or lost,” Mitski said of the new album in a statement. “I needed songs that could help me forgive both others and myself. I make mistakes all the time. I don’t want to put on a front where I’m a role model, but I’m also not a bad person. I needed to create this space mostly for myself where I sat in that gray area.”

“‘Laurel Hell’ is a term from the Southern Appalachians in the U.S., where laurel bushes basically grow in these dense thickets, and they grow really wide,” Mitski also explained in an interview with Zane Lowe on Apple Music 1. “And, I mean, I’ve never experienced it myself, but when you get stuck in these thickets, you can’t get out. Or so the story goes. And so there are a lot of Laurel Hells in America, in the South, where they’re named after the people who died within them because they were stuck. And, so the thing is, laurel flowers are so pretty. They just burst into these explosions of just beauty. And, I just, I liked the notion of being stuck inside this explosion of flowers and perhaps even dying within one of them.”

Mitski is heading out on a sold out tour next year in support of the new album. Mitski’s last album was 2018’s Be the Cowboy—Pitchfork’s No. 1 album of 2018.

Laurel Hell:

01 Valentine, Texas
02 Working for the Knife
03 Stay So
04 Everyone
05 Heat Lightning
06 The Only Heartbreaker
07 Love Me More
08 There’s Nothing Left for You
09 Should’ve Been Me
10 I Guess
11 That’s Our Lamp