Phoebe Bridgers Returns with New Album 'Punisher'

Watch a video for the newly shared track "Kyoto"

BY Brock ThiessenPublished Apr 9, 2020

Phoebe Bridgers is making her next full-length album move. Titled Punisher, the American songwriter's next record will arrive on June 19 via Dead Oceans. Right now, though, she's shared the new song "Kyoto."

The album marks her anticipated follow-up to her 2017 debut Stranger in the Alps, with Punisher being written and recorded between the summer of 2018 and the fall of 2019. Collaborators Tony Berg and Ethan Gruska are back on to help with production, while Bridgers herself co-produced Punisher. The album was mixed by Bright Eyes' Mike Mogis, who also worked on Stranger in the Alps

Beyond that, Punisher features a pile of guest stars, including Conor Oberst, Lucy Dacus, Julien Baker, Blake Mills, Jenny Lee Lindberg, Christian Lee Hutson, Nick Zinner, Jim Keltner and Nathaniel Walcott.

As for "Kyoto," the track follows the recently shared "Garden Song," with the latest album teaser being written while on a trip to Japan in 2019. Below, you can watch a video for the newly shared track.

In a statement about "Kyoto," Bridgers explained:

This song is about impostor syndrome. 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.

Watch the video below. Bridgers will also play the track tonight on Jimmy Kimmel Live!

Since Bridgers's debut album, she has recorded and performed in boygenius with Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus, as well as Better Oblivion Community Center with Conor Oberst. She also released an original song with the National's Matt Berninger.

As previously reported, her tour with the 1975 was recently postponed. New dates have yet to be announced.

Punisher:

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

Latest Coverage