Photo Credit: Sam Pittman

American musician St. Vincent released a new single titled “Tiempos Violentos,” featuring Chilean-Mexican artist Mon LaFerte. The track comes alongside the release of St. Vincent’s new album, Todos Nacen Gritando, which is a new version of her 2024 album All Born Screaming in Spanish. “Tiempos Violentos” is, as the name may suggest, is a reimagining of the track “Violent Times.” A video for the new single was uploaded to her YouTube channel.

The track features LaFerte providing Spanish vocals in a duet with St. Vincent’s English vocals from the original track.  The bilingual nature of the track gives it a captivating element of listening as the singers go back and fourth, not only providing their respective voices and tones, but also singing in distinct tongues. As described in the release, “With Mon’s unmistakable emotional grit and St. Vincent’s sharp-edged lyricism in dialogue, the song becomes something new: a tense, hypnotic meditation on time, identity, and longing across two languages and two visions.” Just as in the original, the song features a slow, creeping and jazzy tone of the original song. While some lyrics are altered in the change to Spanish, the reflective and longing atmosphere of the vocals still remains even to those who may not be able to understand the words themselves.

St. Vincent stated that “Collaborating with Mon gave the song new shape, new blood, new depth. Like a dream falling into another dream.” Similarly, Mon expressed enjoyment with the collaboration, describing the track as “beautiful and haunting.” Mon also added, “I wanted to give it my own voice, to make it mine too – and to do it alongside an artist I’ve long admired.”