Half Waif airs "Keep It Out", the excellent first song from new album Lavender

The album - which follows last year's spectacular form/a EP (one of our favourite releases of 2017) and Probably Depths LP - is a record we're immensely excited about.

New preview "Keep It Out" is described by Plunkett as "about the evolution of the self in a relationship: the maintenance of autonomy in the midst of a process of coupling, ageing, and decay." Celina Carney directs the visual representation of this, which you can check out below:

"Lavender is so named for my grandmother Asha - a nod to the lavender she would pluck from her garden and boil in a pot on the stove," explains Plunkett. "The first time I noticed her doing this, it struck me as a kind of magic: the small black cauldron bubbling with a piece of the earth. She did it to make the house smell good. I believe it was also a ritual of purification, clearing out any shadows that may have tried to creep into the old English home she'd lived in, alone, for 50 years."

"When I wrote and recorded Lavender, my grandmother was alive, and though she wasn't ill at the time of her sudden death in September, it was obvious her life - after 95 years - was drawing to a close. As a result, themes of ageing and collapse are all over this album. It is an elegy to time, the pilgrimages we take, and the ultimate slow plod towards our end. It is an examination of the way we fracture, inside ourselves and inside our relationships - the fissures that creep along the structures we build, the tendency towards disintegration."

"We face many endings in our lives," Plunkett continues, "on the path toward that unfathomable yet omnipresent ultimate Ending. Breakups and divorces, marriages and the estrangement of the self, hard times and bittersweet relief, steep precipices that rise up beyond our control over and over again. These endings are markers of time and growth, small personal apocalypses that pockmark our days. And yet there is more to come when the terror subsides; even the night itself - that great darkness - must end and give way to new light. Lavender is a talisman to hold in the midst of that uncertainty, to heal and remind ourselves that it's not over. It's not ending yet."

The new Half Waif collection is co-produced with David Tolomei with mastering by Heba Kadry.

Half Waif is currently touring Europe with Iron & Wine, and will head to the UK next week. Find out the full details.

Tracklist:

1. Lavender Burning
2. Torches
3. Keep It Out
4. Lilac House
5. In The Evening
6. Solid 2 Void
7. Silt
8. Back In Brooklyn
9. Parts
10. Leveler
11. Salt Candy
12. Ocean Scope