Next month, the Michigan musician Matthew Dear will release a new album, Bunny, his first full-length since 2012’s Beams. In the downtime between albums, he linked up with Canadian duo Tegan And Sara a couple of times, first for a Tears For Fears cover and then for an original Dear track called “Bad Ones,” which came out last year. That track is also on Bunny, alongside another Tegan And Sara collaboration, “Horses.”

“I love being in Matthew’s music brain and leaving little ideas of my own wherever it makes sense,” Sara Quin said in a statement. “His songs sometimes feel abstract, like puzzles that I can’t stop listening to. It continues to be a great privilege and honor for us to collaborate with him.”

Matthew Dear added some more context to the track:

There was a small gallery on Crosby Street in Soho with beautiful large photographs of the wild Sable Island Horses. One photograph in particular was of a horse affectionately biting another, both of their sun-drenched manes flowing wildly in the ocean air. My wife and I passed the window many times over the years and would always say, “that’s us.” Majestic animals, fitting our definition of love. Unpredictable paths with choices made together and other times miles apart. Above all else, we wanted to be those two horses, eternally connected at the end of it all. The song is as deep of an homage to love as I’ve written. I probably won’t write another like this one. It took years to finish. Thank you to Tegan and Sara for helping realize the vision, and to Greg Ahee (Protomartyr) for stripping it all away and reminding me of the simplicity. This one means a lot.

Listen to “Horses” below.

TOUR DATES:
11/01 Denver, CO @ Marquis Theatre
11/02 Los Angeles, CA @ 1720
11/03 Austin, TX @ Empire Control Room
11/04 Portland, OR @ Holocene
11/08 San Francisco, CA @ Public Works
11/09 Vancouver, BC @ Rickshaw
11/11 Seattle, WA @ Nectar
11/15 Chicago, IL @ Sleeping Village
11/16 Brooklyn, NY @ National Sawdust

Bunny is out 10/12 via Ghostly International.