In May, art-pop provocateur Santigold shared her first new single since 2018’s I Don’t Want: The Gold Fire Sessions: “High Priestess.” Since then, Santi announced plans to release her fourth album, Spirituals. Along with “High Priestess” we’ve heard “Ain’t Ready,” and now Santigold has shared a follow-up track, “Nothing,” which also gets a video short by Frank Ockenfels.

Santigold has opened up a bit about “Nothing,” which she calls “a song I wrote about invisibility”:

It’s a song for anyone who has not been seen, and for me it was an opportunity to explore how that feels. I wrote Nothing in the midst of the Black Lives Matter protests, and in writing the lyrics I was able to release a heaviness that I did not know I was carrying. Being Black and being a woman, particularly one who has chosen the creative path that I have chosen, I have always felt invisible to a degree. People see only what they think they know, or what they think I should be. Or sometimes, they see nothing at all. This song is about the burden of existing beneath a veil of nothingness. And the strength it requires just to be, despite it.

Of “Nothing”‘s short film, Santi adds:

This video vignette was inspired by a Wangechi Mutu image called Snake Eater. I had seen the image years ago and when I was thinking up visual ideas for this song, this piece came to mind. I loved the idea of a being that is woman but also beyond human in some way, and even unclassifiable. A being for whom there is no name, no category, who is totally unique, and fierce. I wanted to become this type of creature in this video because I don’t believe we have to know how to name or define what we’re seeing to accept that it exists, that it’s beautiful and powerful and worthy of being exactly what it is. How exciting to encounter a being so magnificent that it is beyond our imaginations. How exciting to find that that beast is living within you and to set it free.

Watch and listen below.

TOUR DATES:
10/09 — Atlanta, GA @ Buckhead Theatre
10/11 — Silver Spring, MD @ The Fillmore
10/13 — Philadelphia, PA @ Franklin Music Hall
10/16 — Boston, MA @ House Of Blues
10/17 — Brooklyn, NY @ Great Hall at the Avant Gardner
10/19 — Montreal, QUE @ Mtelus
10/21 — Toronto, ONT @ The Danforth Music Hall
10/24 — Chicago, IL @ Byline Bank Aragon Ballroom
10/25 — St. Paul, MN @ Myth Live
11/03 — Los Angeles, CA @ The Wiltern
11/05 — San Francisco, CA @ The Masonic
11/07 — Portland, OR @ Crystal Ballroom
11/08 — Seattle, WA @ Showbox Sodo
11/10 — Salt Lake City, UT @ The Complex
11/11 — Denver, CO @ Fillmore Auditorium
11/13 — Albuquerque, NM @ Sunshine Theater
11/14 — Tempe, AZ @ Marquee Theatre
11/16 — Las Vegas, NV @ House of Blues
11/17 — San Diego, CA @ Soma

Spirituals is out 9/9 via Santigold’s label Little Jerk Records.