Mitski is currently on a pretty major, mostly sold-out tour in support of last year’s stunning The Land Is Inhospitable But So Are We (here’s Exclaim!’s review of her first night in Toronto), but she first previewed the album with some acoustic gigs in smaller, more intimate venues.
It was at one of these shows in New York's Town Hall that Mitski first covered Pete Seeger’s haunting 1966 environmentalist protest song “Coyote, My Little Brother,” which was written by Seeger’s folk contemporary Peter La Farge.
Today, Mitski releases a live-in-studio recorded version of that cover, a Spotify Single that includes an acoustic version of The Land Is Inhospitable’s “Buffalo Replaced.”
Mitski’s version is reverent to Seeger’s, retaining the eerie high notes and spare instrumentation. Unsurprisingly, she also manages to imbue the song with an added layer of chilling desperation. It’s a lovely, faithful cover of a prescient and still-moving song, and you can hear it below alongside Seeger’s original.