Juliana Hatfield has released her new single “Popsicle” from her upcoming album Lightning Might Strike, along with a nostalgic and quietly haunting video directed by Paige Applin. The song marks the second preview of Hatfield’s 21st solo album, which finds the songwriter reflecting on change and the passage of time with her trademark blend of wit and melancholy.

Musically, “Popsicle” is deceptively bright. Made up of a jangly, melodic track with sugary harmonies and warm guitar tones. But beneath its sweet surface lies a meditation on fate and self-worth. “We get what we think we deserve / and that’s why I’ve got nothing much of anything,” Hatfield sings. The refrain, “My hopes and dreams are in decline / melting slowly like my mind,” really shows the song’s balance of resignation and self-awareness.

“I love to take a simple, recognizable idea…and use it as a symbol of all the dread in my head,” Hatfield explains. That creative impulse is mirrored in the video, which takes ordinary moments and mixes them with uneasy moments of life. Shot in a lo-fi camcorder style, the visuals follow Hatfield through small domestic rituals, like mowing the lawn, brushing her dog, raking leaves and of course eating popsicles, cut with scenes of her playing her guitar in the woods. These images are then juxtaposed with flashes of chaos (traffic jams, burning trees, and flooding landscapes).

The result is a portrait of modern anxiety wrapped in suburban stillness, perfectly aligned with Hatfield’s gift for creating songs that are both disarmingly honest and darkly whimsical. With Lightning Might Strike, due later this year, she continues to prove that even the simplest symbols can hold worlds of meaning.