Phoebe Bridgers announces highly-anticipated second album with lead single "Kyoto"

"Kyoto" is the second single to be shared from Bridgers' follow up to 2017's Stranger in the Alps, after February's "Garden Song".

Bridgers wrote her new single during her first trip to Japan in February 2019. They planned to shoot the video on a trip in March 2020, but the coronavirus pandemic resulted in the trip being cancelled, so she decided to virtually tour Japan with the help of a green screen.

"This song is about impostor syndrome," explains Bridgers. "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."

Punisher was written and recorded between summer 2018 and autumn 2019, and sees Bridgers take on a co-producing role alongside frequent collaborators Tony Berg and Ethan Gruska. The album features her band - Marshall Vore (drums), Harrison Whitford (guitar), Emily Retsas (bass) and Nick White (piano) - as well as guest contributions from Conor Oberst, Lucy Dacus, Julien Baker, Blake Mills, Warpaint's Jenny Lee Lindberg, Christian Lee Hutson, Nick Zinner, Jim Keltner, and Bright Eyes' Nathaniel Walcott, who plays horns on "Kyoto".

Since the release of her debut LP Stranger in the Alps, Bridgers has been far from quiet. She released a collaborative EP with boygenius (Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker), and a whole album with Conor Oberst as Better Oblivion Community Center. She's also produced Christian Lee Hutson's forthcoming debut record Beginners, and most recently featured on The 1975's "Jesus Christ 2005 God Bless America" single.

Tracklist:

1. DVD Menu
2. Garden Song
3. Kyoto
4. Punisher
5. Halloween
6. Chinese Satellite
7. Moon Song
8. Savior Complex
9. ICU
10. Graceland Too
11. I Know The End