Okkervil River have released a brand new single Pulled Up The Ribbon ahead of their forthcoming album In The Rainbow Rain, due for release in late April.

Frontman Will Sheff describes Pulled Up The Ribbon perfectly as “skeletal”. This beautiful indie folk song has been stripped back and what is left is a beautiful undercurrent that holds steady a gentle but powerful blend of acoustic and electric guitar melodies.

Sheff is accompanied by New Yorker, Sarah Pedinotti who is both mesmerising as a singer, with her dulcet tones and as a keyboard player who is as integral to the sound of the song as the guitars. Sarah could easily be mistaken for a reincarnation of the iconic Kate Bush.

Directed by Christopher Good, the enigmatic video works as a great analogy for the song with sweeping, majestic camera angles soaring over the ocean waves, waves which increase in ferocity as the song progresses. Sheff and Pedinotti are isolated on the rocks as a number of nautical characters act out scenes of discovery; think pirates and a giant guitar, a young girl in a pearl collar discovering dragon bones in a chest of drawers in a cave and mermaids playing musical instruments under the ocean.

A lighthouse graces the screen as Sheff and Pedinotti sing about shipwrecks of the Emerald Isle and searchlights shining light on the fear and danger that surrounds them, but the lighthouse still succumbs to the waves. Ultimately the song is an ode to the powerful forces that are at work all around us everyday, bringing destruction and death, but also paving the way for breathing life into something new.

Will says of the track:

When I first started working on ‘Pulled Up the Ribbon” I felt really excited about the melody and the chords in a way that made me nervous, because I felt pressure to write lyrics for it and nothing seemed quite right. I started with something quite dark and violent, and it felt like a good direction but I kept hitting creative dead ends. And then I realized there was something in the melody and phrasing that seemed like it was about destruction and doom but also something else that felt like it was about creation and birth. So I decided to try to write a kind of praise song for the force behind all of those things.

In The Rainbow Rain due out  27th April on ATO Records.

You can catch Okkervil River live in the UK as they return for a headline show at London’s KOKO on October 10th.