Empath announces new album ‘Visitor’ with new single “Diamond Eyelids” and an off-kilter music video

Empath make it impossible to take your eyes off of the music video for their new single, “Diamond Eyelids.” Offbeat and slightly out there, the video directed by Halle Ballard seems at odds with the sparkling new song. Their new album, Visitor, will be out on February 11 via Fat Possum Records. Produced by Jake Portrait (Unknown Mortal Orchestra), the release marks the first time they have ever recorded with a producer in a formal studio setting.

There’s a distant quality to the track that makes it sound like the band is playing underwater. Lead-singer Catherine Elicson vocals seem to do cartwheels as she trapezes between dead-pan and spiraling high-notes. The tinkering tambourine and warbling guitar riffs add to this off-kilter feeling. Pulling inspiration from retro-horror movies such as Nosferatu (1922) and The Wicker Man (1973) as well as 70s icons such as David Bowie and Fleetwood Mac, their hodge-podge of influences contribute to the eccentric nature of the song. It sounds like auditory acrobatics as the song flips around and they attempt zany new tricks like the heavy distortion that closes out the track.

“This song was written stream of consciousness from a few pieced together memories I had,” Catherine Elicson said in a statement. “One of coming downstairs at my house one morning and unexpectedly finding a friend who lives on the other side of the country asleep on the couch, and the other memory was of when a friend used to travel from Chicago an hour and a half to the suburbs to work full time at a low paying Americorps job. Collaging memories in a way that created an emotional narrative about reaching for a fleeting moment of connection and familiarity.”

The video shows Elicson giving birth to the rest of her band, and was initially inspired by the band’s desire to have a puppet video of them made. The papier-mache puppets appear in Elicson’s womb jamming out to the single in what could be the most offbeat places to play a show.

You can stream the track here and check out the video below.