Aimee Mann has been making music for a long time, and her work is always in the air. Last year, for instance, Big Red Machine covered her classic bittersweet Magnolia jam “Wise Up,” and the same song recently showed up on the season premiere of Ted Lasso. Mann also covered Leonard Cohen’s “Avalanche” last year, and her cover served as the theme music for the HBO show I’ll Be Gone In The Dark. And today, Mann has announced her new album Queens Of The Summer Hotel, her follow-up to 2017’s excellent Mental Illness. She’s got a new song for us, too.

Three years ago, Mann announced that she was writing music for a stage musical version of Girl, Interrupted. In working on the songs Mann tapped into her own mental health struggles, and when the pandemic put the musical plans on hold, Mann turned those songs into her own record. That’s what Queens Of The Summer Hotel is. Mann has shared the video for first single “Suicide Is Murder,” a dark and detached and lovely song. Mann sings about the “motive, means, and opportunity” needed to plan out the end of your life, as if it’s a crime scene.

Talking about “Suicide Is Murder,” Mann says:

I started to write this song because I’ve known people who committed suicide and friends who’ve had loved ones die from suicide. I think the phrase “suicide is murder” took on a meaning for me as it’s the worst thing to have to deal with in the aftermath. It’s just terrible. Because every person who knows the person who committed suicide will blame themselves in some way for not noticing or stepping in or doing something. They’ll till the end of their days, say, “Was there something I could have done?”

Mann’s regular collaborators Rob Hatch-Miller and Puloma Basu directed the “Suicide Is Murder” video, and it stars the character actor and Hal Hartley favorite James Urbaniak as a man who is considering ending things, using a game of Clue to imagine how me might do it. It’s pretty heavy. Check it out below.

Queens Of The Summer Hotel is out 11/6 on Mann’s own SuperEgo label.