Kevin Bronson on January 26th, 2022

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Hard to believe the last time Warpaint released music was during the Obama Administration.

The L.A. quartet — Emily Kokal, Jenny Lee Lindberg, Stella Mozgawa and Theresa Wayman — returned today with the new song “Champion,” along with the news that their fifth full-length, “Radiate Like This,” will be out May 6.

As is Warpaint’s habit, “Champion” sounds vast without being claustrophobic, intoxicating without the sugar. It’s like being mesmerized a magnificent, lone tree on the horizon, because who needs a forest?

Over the past six years, the band points out, there have been tours, solo projects, family obligations, geographical roadblocks and other distractions preventing their getting to work on new music. When they finally did, doing early sessions with co-producer Sam Petts-Davies, it was right before the pandemic hit. They moved forward by recording their parts on “Radiate Like This” separately and layering them together.

“I was saying the other day that we should’ve called this album ‘Exquisite Corpse,’ but it was already taken,” Kokal said in the album announcement, referring to the title of the band’s debut EP in 2008.

Warpaint has a U.K./European tour scheduled for May leading up to their June appearance at Barcelona’s Primavera Sound festival. Maybe they will appear at the inaugural L.A. edition of Primavera Sound in September? Stay tuned.

||| Stream: “Champion”