Karen O! You know her: Yeah Yeah Yeahs leader and all around agreed upon badass. She’s an inspiration to many, including the promising young Texas band Sun June, who are releasing their sophomore album Somewhere next year. They shared “Singing” from it a few weeks ago and today they’re offering up “Karen O,” a lilting song that, if we’re speaking on Karen O terms, takes its cues from her solo album or maybe some of the more introspective moments on It’s Blitz!. But really the sound is Sun June’s own, a gorgeous sway grounded by a weary performance from Laura Colwell: “I saw Karen O live/ In a basement in Brooklyn/ Had a dream that night/ That you came back to me.”

Here’s the band’s statement about the song:

‘Karen O’ is one of the only songs we’ve written that takes place over the course of a single night, and we hope we captured what it feels like when you’re completely worn out but can’t bring yourself to go home and go to sleep. It’s about the kind of night you let heartache swallow you whole, and you find yourself heading straight toward the things you should be running away from. The actual Karen O is a hero of ours of course, and in the song she spurs on a lonely night of reflection about what could be versus what can’t. It covers some of our favorite topics-love, performance, regret, and hereditary drinking problems-and explores how we sometimes choose to heighten grief rather than reduce it. It also features a voicemail mailbox, which is unfortunate.

We shot the video out on a Texas Hill Country ranch with a spotlight ranchers use to check on cattle at night (very Texas of us). We thought the stage lights and disco ball helped draw out the connection between feeling an emotion and performing it, both for yourself and others. We got lucky and happened to shoot during a lightning storm, so we went full melodrama with it.

Check it out below.

TRACKLIST:
01 “Bad With Time”
02 “Everything I Had”
03 “Singing”
04 “Bad Girl”
05 “Karen O”
06 “Everywhere”
07 “Once In A While”
08 “Finding Out”
09 “Seasons”
10 “Real Thing”
11 “Colors”

Somewhere is out 2/5 via Run For Cover/Keeled Scales. Pre-order it here.