The Avalanches have returned with their first new single in six years. “Together” features Nikki Nair, Jessy Lanza, and Prentiss, an 18-year-old artist and producer based in Jackson, Missouri. An anthropomorphic iPod and floppy disk are the stars of the song’s accompanying visualizer, which was directed and animated by frequent collaborator Jonathan Zawada. Check it out below.
Though they’ve made no official announcement to date, the Avalanches have been teasing their fourth studio album since the fall, when they posted an Instagram story of a stack of hard drives with the caption “LP #4.” More recently, the Australian trio launched a website for a fake company called Takumi, whose mascot is a purple cartoon cat that wears a witch hat and flies on a broomstick.
“At Takumi, we understand that digital archives are more than data repositories – they are institutional memory, intellectual property, and cultural heritage,” reads the “mission statement” on takumiarchives.com. “Our platform combines enterprise-grade security, scalable infrastructure, and intelligent indexing to deliver a secure, future-ready foundation for digital preservation.”
The last Avalanches album to date, We Will Always Love You, came out in 2020. That record’s expansive guest list brought together Blood Orange, Karen O, MGMT, Vashti Bunyan, and Rivers Cuomo, among others. Since its release, the Avalanches reissued their Y2K classic Since I Left You for its 20th anniversary, dropped an MF Doom remix of that album’s “Tonight May Have to Last Me All My Life,” and released collaborations with Jamie xx and the late Cola Boyy.
Read about Since I Left You at No. 10 in The 200 Best Albums of the 2000s.
