Days after Gracie Abrams revealed her new album Daughter From Hell, the singer-songwriter has dropped the lead single “Hit the Wall.”
“Hit the Wall” opens with a twinkling of synths, as Abrams sings, “I’m a crack in the pavement/I’m a slipknot/I’m afraid that my fortress/Is a glass box.” And later, as the instrumentation simmers: “Sooner or later, you’ll find out/I live in a pattern of breakdowns.”
In the video above, directed by Renell Medrano, Abrams appears lost as she opens a series of blue doors that lead to different dreamlike scenarios. One door leads to the singer sitting on a hospital bed while doctors hold up inkblots, while another opens to an eerie corridor with twins waiting at the end, a scene echoing The Shining. The visual concludes on a bittersweet note, with Abrams singing in front of a burning tree, “I’m not a problem you can solve.”
Daughter From Hell, Abrams’ third album, arrives July 17 via Interscope Records. She wrote and produced it with her longtime collaborator Aaron Dessner. On Instagram, Dessner said they began working on Daughter From Hell the same day they cut Abrams’ hit “That’s So True” and “I Told You Things,” off the Secret of Us deluxe.
“I can’t believe it’s been 6 years since Gracie and I started making songs together,” Dessner wrote. “I’m deeply grateful for every song we have made and the way we have kept challenging ourselves and growing together as collaborators and friends, sometimes hitting the wall, and then pushing and breaking through.”
He added: “You’ll hear us expanding our musical vocabulary and pushing into uncharted waters sonically, and most of all the sharpening and deepening of Gracie’s lyricism and expression in ways that continue to astound me. I believe this album contains absolutely the most moving and powerful work we have done together — it feels elevated in every way — and I can’t WAIT until you all get to hear it.”
For Rolling Stone‘s Musicians on Musicians issue last fall, Abrams told Cyndi Lauper about her desire not to rush the new album. “I don’t know what I want to say yet,” she said. “It’s actually having something to say, not just making noise for the sake of making noise.”