Phoebe Bridgers ‘Kyoto’

IT has been a busy month for Phoebe Bridgers. After releasing ‘The Garden Song’ at the beginning of March, the singer-songwriter has guested on a Hayley Williams track alongside her boygenius comrades, covered a song by her Better Oblivion Community Center bandmate Conor Oberst and featured on a new song by The 1975.

Now Bridgers is back with news of her second album ‘Punisher’ which will be released on 19th June via Dead Oceans. Alongside the announcement, she has shared a brand new track called ‘Kyoto’.

Written after her first trip to Japan in 2019, the song’s verses are tight and tense in delivery before the singer takes flight on the cathartic chorus. Featuring flourishes of euphoric brass by Bright Eyes’ Nathaniel Walcott and input from Warpaint’s Jenny Lee Lindberg, it’s another gorgeous reminder of Bridgers’ lyrical prowess, pairing her lovely turn of phrase with upbeat, rumbling guitars and a yearning hook.

She said: “This song is about impostor syndrome. About being in Japan for the first time, somewhere I’ve always wanted to go, and playing my music to people who want to hear it, feeling like I’m living someone else’s life. I dissociate when bad things happen to me, but also when good things happen. It can feel like I’m performing what I think I’m supposed to be like. I wrote this one as a ballad first, but at that point I was so sick of recording slow songs, it turned into this.”

Bridgers co-produces her new album alongside her Strangers In The Alps collaborators Tony Berg and Ethan Gruska. Other musicians confirmed to appear on it include Conor Oberst, Julien Baker, Lucy Dacus, Blake Mills, Jenny Lee Lindberg, Christian Lee, Nick Zinner, Jim Keltner and Bright Eyes’ Nathaniel Walcott. It arrives on 19th June.

Check out the new track and its new video below.