The Magnetic Fields have announced a new collection called Quickies. It features 28 new short songs by Stephin Merritt that are all under three minutes long. Quickies will be released across five vinyl EPs on May 15 via Nonesuch. It’ll also be available digitally and on a single CD. Watch the new video for “The Day the Politicians Died” below.

The band has also announced a series of intimate residency performances at City Winery venues across the country. Find those dates below.

Stephin Merritt is joined on Quickies by his bandmates Sam Davol, Claudia Gonson, Shirley Simms, and John Woo. Chris Ewen, Daniel Handler, and Pinky Weitzman also appear on the collection. Merritt discussed the album’s concept in a statement:

I’ve been reading a lot of very short fiction, and I enjoyed writing 101 Two-Letter Words, the poetry book about the shortest words you can use in Scrabble. And I’ve been listening to a lot of French baroque harpsichord music. Harpsichord doesn’t lend itself to languor. So I’ve been thinking about one instrument at a time, playing for about a minute or so and then stopping, and I’ve been thinking of narratives that are only a few lines long. Also, I had been using a lot of small notebooks, so when I reach the bottom of the page, I’ve only gone a short way. Now that I’m working on a different album, I’m enforcing a large notebook rule so that I don’t do Quickies twice in a row.

Merritt’s previous Magnetic Fields album was 2017’s 50 Song Memoir. Listen to Pitchfork’s 2017 In Sight Out podcast with Stephin Merritt.

Quickies: