Julien Baker has announced her new album, Little Oblivions, will be released on February 26 via Matador Records. Along with the album announcement, Baker has shared the first single off of Little Oblivions, “Faith Healer.” Baker also released a music video, that had been directed by Daniel Henry, to accompany “Faith Healer.”

“Put most simply, I think that ‘Faith Healer’ is a song about vices, both the obvious and the more insidious ways that they show up in the human experience,” Baker said in a press release. “I started writing this song 2 years ago and it began as a very literal examination of addiction. For awhile, I only had the first verse, which was just a really candid confrontation of the cognitive dissonance a person who struggles with substance abuse can feel – the overwhelming evidence that this substance is harming you, and the counterintuitive but very real craving for the relief it provides. When I revisited the song I started thinking about the parallels between the escapism of substance abuse and other various means of escapism that had occupied a similar, if less identifiable, space in my psyche.”

Baker’s soft voice winds around the weaves and flows of the quiet instrumentals beneath her, the track dancing as she searches for healing. Acoustic strums, sweet synths and soft drums join her in “Faith Healer” as the music video shows a brawl between two men in an empty church, a woman scanning and a woman scanning a bible. Baker sits alone on a chair, shown on a video screen. The emotional soundtrack highlights the inner turmoil of the video’s characters, each searching for their own sense of faith.

“There are so many channels and behaviors that we use to placate discomfort unhealthily which exist outside the formal definition of addiction,” Baker said in a press statement. “I (and so many other people) are willing to believe whomever – a political pundit, a preacher, a drug dealer, an energy healer – when they promise healing, and how that willingness, however genuine, might actually impede healing.”

Little Oblivions will be Baker’s third studio album, and second via Matador Records, following 2017’s Turn Out The Lights. Baker released a string of non-album singles over the past year, including “Tokyo,” “Sucker Punch” and “Mercy.” In 2018, Baker formed the band boygenius alongside Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus, the trio releasing their debut self-titled EP that same year via Matador Records.

Little Oblivions track list:

1. “Hardline”
2. “Heatwave”
3. “Faith Healer”
4. “Relative Fiction”
5. “Crying Wolf”
6. “Bloodshot”
7. “Ringside”
8. “Favor”
9. “Song in E”
10. “Repeat”
11. “Highlight Reel”
12. “Ziptie”

Photo Credit: Kalyn Oyer