Indie-folk act Fruit Bats, the long-running project of Eric D. Johnson, have announced a career-spanning 20th anniversary 2xLP compilation, Sometimes A Cloud Is Just A Cloud: Slow Growers, Sleeper Hits And Lost Songs (2001–2021). Topping off the release, which arrives in January of next year, is a full-bodied new song, “Rips Me Up.”

Here’s what Johnson had to say about “Rips Me Up”:

Every once [in] a while, you’ll record a song for an album and that song feels really great but also vibes like an emotional and/or sonic outlier from the others. Here’s one of those from The Pet Parade sessions. Hopefully this gets put somewhere in the pantheon of “trying to be a better man” songs. I’m not sure why I wrote it. I must have been feeling uneasy that day. Oh, also: yeah, I know it’s always weird when an artist puts a new song on a “greatest hits” album. But since I’ve never really truly had a “hit,” I figured I could break that rule here and put it on this new compilation and retrospective. Joe Russo and Nathan Vanderpool and Josh Mease and Josh Kaufman are on here. They are all wonderful. Enjoy this little ripper.

Listen to “Rips Me Up” below.

Sometimes a Cloud Is Just a Cloud: Slow Growers, Sleeper Hits and Lost Songs (2001–2021) is out 1/28 via Merge.