@ Shares “Bird” Ahead of 4AD Album Autosmile

Philadelphia duo @ have released “Bird,” the third single from their upcoming 4AD album Autosmile. The song keeps the project’s hyperfolk identity intact while pushing toward a narrower, stranger place: sparse guitar, a held eeriness, and Stone Filipczak’s voice cutting through the quiet. “I’m at the mercy of God,” Filipczak sings, less as confession than as plain fact.

Filipczak says the song was inspired by dead baby birds that kept appearing on his deck and was written during a bike ride through Baltimore’s Druid Hill Park. The lyrics hold the same friction, pairing bleak images with wordplay. “The lyrics have lots of puns which hopefully offset their hopelessness,” he explains.

Director Caity Arthur picked up on that mix of humor and macabre. She points to the line “Give me warmth, give me death, whatever I don’t want it / I walked out on the deck to put a hole in my head” as jarring and casual. While planning the video, a black and white bird died on her balcony and was hollowed out by insects. That image shaped the visual, locating beauty inside decay rather than turning away from it.

Autosmile is out October 16 on 4AD.