Back in the spring, Porter Robinson began rolling out Nurture, his first album under his own name since dropping the spellbinding debut Worlds in 2014. The producer and singer-songwriter shared “Get Your Wish” and “Something Comforting,” a pair of electronic pop songs that played like uptempo ballads, wistful and weary but beaming with an optimistic neon glow. Once the pandemic set in, Robinson put his album campaign on hold and pivoted to an online festival called Secret Sky. Now he’s releasing new music again.

Today’s new track “Mirror” begins with plaintive piano but quickly shifts to an anticipation-building electronic backbeat. Soon Robinson’s breathy narration is locked into a duet with his pitched-up alter ego. As a wall of gorgeous sound builds up, he digs into the challenge of breaking free from a cycle of shame, self-loathing, and second-guessing.

In a statement, Robinson elaborates:

mirror is a song about the costs of being hard on yourself. we all have these avatars that we give to our critical inner voices — we might imagine a scornful parent telling us we’ll fail, or a critic telling us our work comes up short, or a society telling us that we aren’t good enough — it’s about recognizing that most of this criticism is self-inflicted. for years, i was imagining the worst thing a critic might say about my music and looking at my own work as negatively as possible as a way to protect myself from criticism, but it never once served me. my hope is that other people can overcome this same kind of shame — it can be really liberating to recognize that most of the time, we’re only letting our own thoughts get in the way, and we can do something about it.

Listen below.

Nurture still has no publicly announced release date.