It's been an exciting (and somewhat unsettling) past few days to be a Radiohead fan: First, the group used something called "the mail"(??) to send out cryptic leaflets featuring the phrase "BURN THE WITCH: WE KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE." Then the band demonstrated how to disappear completely by seemingly erasing its website and social media channels, prompting rumors that either the group had some new music on the way, or that it was behind on its GoDaddy bills.
This morning, we got some answers, in the form of a video for "Burn the Witch," ostensibly the first single from the band's still-untitled ninth studio album, which is due later this year (no date for the album has been announced yet; knowing Radiohead, it will likely be revealed via a series of vaguely worded missives written on ping-pong balls and dropped into the Thames via a giant, boar-shaped dirigible). The stop-motion clip is a sardonic, cheeky ode to the 1973 cult classic The Wicker Man, but the real dark thrills come courtesy of the song itself---a tightly wound, strings-stung account of paranoia and panic attacks that's as happily dread-inducing as you'd hope. It's proof that, decades into their career, Radiohead still knows how to hit us where we live.
