Last month, Lambchop announced a new album called Showtunes, which project leader Kurt Wagner made during lockdown. We first heard “A Chef’s Kiss” from it and today we’re getting the album’s second single, “Fuku,” that he cowrote with the Cologne-based DJ Twit One. It comes with a short film directed by Doug Anderson.

“There is a theatricality to the song ‘Fuku’ which is a thread that runs through the Showtunes idea,” Wagner said in a statement. “Doug Anderson responded to that like a cat to catnip. On first viewing, the visual might appear a bit unusual, foreign even, but trust me, it could have been a lot weirder.”

Here’s Anderson’s statement about the video:

I heard Kurt’s song and was absolutely in love. “Fuku” evokes all of the things that the musical theater reaches for but is incapable of representing: the desire, longing, and impossibility of really falling in love. It reminded me of the truth in Walter Pater’s “All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music.” Pure and abstract.

The characters in the video try and fail to communicate their experience—they possess nothing and are incapable of giving that nothing to another. Attempting to evoke coherence from the inconsistent, disparate, and stupid. They persist.

Watch and listen below.

Showtunes is out 5/21 via Merge/City Slang. Pre-order it here.