It’s time. Over the past few days, FKA twigs has sent fans into frenzy speculating that new music might be on the way. A captionless photo that she posted recalled artwork from 2014’s LP1 and 2015’s M3LL155X, and she announced a number of tour dates, so naturally, the internet went to work and discovered that twigs had licensed a song called “Cellophane.” And today is the day. FKA twigs’ just dropped the new song and video — her first music release in over three years — and a glimpse of what’s to come on her highly anticipated second album.
“Cellophane” is possibly twigs’ most vulnerable song to date and her lyrics are full of heartbreak. “Didn’t I do it for you? Why don’t I do It for you?” she asks. Of the process, twigs says: “Throughout my life I’ve practiced my way to being the best I could be, it didn’t work this time. I had to tear down every process I’d ever relied on. Go deeper. Rebuild. Start again.”
The song is accompanied by a cinematic video directed by Andrew Thomas Huang, which has twigs taking to the stage in gigantic, clinking platforms to perform a solo pole dancing show. As she gets going, she encounters a few otherworldly creatures along the way, in typical twigs’ fashion, and finds herself falling into an ethereal fantasy realm. Though even without the stunning visuals, her vocals have the power to transcend. Twigs has been training for months to star in the powerful video. “When I wrote cellophane over a year ago a visual narrative came to me immediately, I knew I had to learn how to pole-dance to bring it to life, and so that’s what I did,” she says. Watch it below.