photo by Eliot Lee Hazel

Every Monday through Friday, we deliver a different song as part of our Song of the Day podcast subscription. This podcast features exclusive KEXP in-studio performances, unreleased songs, and recordings from independent artists that our DJ’s think you should hear. Today’s song, featured on the Midday Show with Cheryl Waters, is “I Am Chemistry” by Yeasayer from their forthcoming album, Amen & Goodbye, due April 1st on Mute.

Yeasayer - I Am Chemistry (MP3)

Across their four albums, Brookyln's Yeasayer have capitalized on their ability to warp heady tones into taut, often hook-laden songs that work their way through the psychedelic spectrum. Formed by longtime friends Chris Keating and Anand Wilder (who both serve as principle songwriters and frontmen of the group), along with bassist Ira Wolf Tuton, in the mid-2000s, the trio quickly became one of the key players in the blog buzz-driven Brooklyn scene with the release of their 2007 debut album, All Hour Cymbals. The band's profile only increased with the release of its 2010 follow up, the danceable and bright Odd Blood, which led them on their longest tour to that point. 2012's Fragrant World and its accompanying tour continued down the dance-driven path Odd Blood set, and after a few years off, the band announced their 2016 return, Amen & Goodbye. The first song released from the album, "I Am Chemistry" shows that Yeasayer have lost none of their sense of adventure in their time away. What initially jerks and pops with the strange allure of an alien dancefloor filler soon concedes to the band's more experimental textures, drifting into a percolating middle-section. When the two sides of the track merge in a final push, it sounds like the amalgamation of three scientists at work in the lab, only Yeasayer's lab is a dreamcatcher- and tapestry-filled studio and seeing that the magnetically rhythmic elements are all in place, "I Am Chemistry" is the result of an experiment that could have only gone right.

After its release on April 1st, Yeasayer will tour behind Amen & Goodbye later this year, including a stop at the 2016 Sasquatch Music Festival. Keep up with the band at their Facebook and website, and watch the, as always, trippy video for "I Am Chemistry" here: