THAO Returns After Six Years With a Song About Staying Open — and It’s Stunning

Twenty years into her career, THAO has dropped the band name. Thao and The Get Down Stay Down is now simply THAO, back on Kill Rock Stars, and back with her first new single in six years. “Fossils” is worth the wait — propulsive drum fills, lilting synths, yearning guitar, and a build toward the kind of communal vocal ending that makes you want to play it twice immediately. Co-produced with Merrill Garbus and Nate Brenner of Tune-Yards, it’s joyful and urgent and completely her own.

By the song’s end, the voices pile in: first THAO and her co-producers, then her Bay Area Monday Night Dinner crew (including Salt Fat Acid Heat author Samin Nosrat and KQED Forum host Alexis Madrigal), then friends, fans, colleagues, and their children who sent in recordings from wherever they were. It’s a song about staying open to love and each other, and it sounds like it.

THAO is teasing something bigger coming soon. In the meantime she heads out this weekend supporting Lord Huron on a run of East Coast and Northeast dates. If you’ve been sleeping on her live show, this is the chance to fix that.