The Yeah Yeah Yeahs return continues with their newest single, “Burning,” a Andrew Wyatt-produced track that is dancefloor-bound and built over a piano loop inspired by The Four Seasons’ “Beggin,” it captures Karen O engulfed in the tumult of Los Angeles in 2020 — the fires and smoke bearing down on the city.
Karen O wrote about the song, saying:
“Back when I was 19 living in the east village, one night a roommate dragged me out of the apartment for an impromptu drink across the street, I left a votive candle burning on a plastic yaffa block which in my absence set flame to my room. Within an hour and a half of having one drink down the block firefighters had come and gone extinguishing the fire, I came home to find that a natural disaster had occurred (to my room) and most of my stuff, lost in the flames. All electronic goods were melted and demolished like my laptop, cameras etc. but oddly enough the items that held the most sentimental value remained intact like sketchbooks, a favorite sweater with hearts across the chest, and photographs. I had photos of my parents in their youth where the fire burnt around the two of them as if there was some intangible force field protecting them, many photos like that, mysteriously leaving the beloved subjects untouched.
If the world is on fire I hope the most beloved stay protected and that we do all we can to protect what we cherish most in this life. ‘Burning’ is a song about that feeling, smoke signals for the soul. Begging to cool it down, just doing it the best we know how. Nick and I nodded to Frankie Valli’s ‘Begging’, with the line ‘oooh lay your red hand on me baby.’ We’ve cut a rug to many a soulful sixties bangers in our day, it was in our DNA by the time we wrote ‘Burning’.”
Yeah Yeah Yeahs made their official return with the announcement of their fifth studio album, Cool It Down, which will be released on September 30th via Secretly Canadian. The eight-track collection is an expert distillation of the band’s best gifts that impel you to move, cry, and listen closely and is bound to be a landmark in their catalog. Cool It Down is available for pre-order now.
“Burning,” featured on today’s New Music Daily on Apple Music, follows the release of the first single and album opener, the Dave Sitek-produced “Spitting Off the Edge of the World” feat. Perfume Genius. The haunting and powerful song is cocooned by the interplay of Karen O and Perfume Genius’s immediately recognizable vocals and was met with critical acclaim.
