Lee Ranaldo, the guy who used to conjure up whirlwinds of electrifying guitar noise in Sonic Youth, has a new solo album on the way. The upcoming Electric Trim features Ranaldo’s band the Dust, which includes his former Sonic Youth bandmate Steve Shelley, and Sharon Van Etten also contributed vocals to six songs. One of those songs is “New Thing,” the latest we’re hearing from the album after lead single “Circular (Right As Rain)” and a live rendition of the title track. It’s a shaggily melodic rocker with piano and electronics dancing around the edges, and it comes along with a video directed by Galaxie 500’s Naomi Yang.

“I’ve described ‘New Thing’ as ‘my song about the Internet’ — about our thousands of ‘friends’ and the obsession with accumulating ‘likes,'” Ranaldo says. “When Naomi and I began discussing ideas for the video we knew we wanted to reference that subject matter but didn’t want to do so in any heavy-handed way. I told her I’d like to be a character of some sort rather than ‘guy singing with guitar’ and she found ‘Buster,’ as we dubbed the JVC 3100R ‘Television/Radio Pyramid Capsule Unit’ on eBay. You wouldn’t believe what a cool old useless piece of outdated technology like that sells for these days!”

Watch Ranaldo wander about the city enraptured by “the new thing” below.

Tour dates:

10/24 Los Angeles, CA @ Zebulon
10/25 San Francisco, CA @ The Chapel
10/27 Portland, OR @ Bunk Bar 
10/28 Seattle, WA @ Barboza
10/29 Vancouver, BC @ The Cobalt
11/01 Burlington, VT @ ArtsRiot
11/02 Montreal, QC @ La Sala Rossa
11/03 Toronto, ON @ Great Hall
11/04 Detroit, MI @ El Club
11/05 Chicago, IL @ Subterranean
11/08 Boston, MA @ ONCE Ballroom
11/09 Brooklyn, NY @ Bell House
11/10 Philadelphia, PA @ Johnny Brenda's
11/11 Washington, DC @ Black Cat

Electric Trim is out 9/15 on Mute. Pre-order it here.