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Before she ever knew him personally, Courtney Barnett leaned on Kurt Vile during a low point in her life. “I was kind of unemployed, and kind of depressed, and just going through this weird time, and for some reason this song just really connected with me,” the Australian singer-songwriter recalled when I reached her last month, referring to the intensely lonely ballad “Peeping Tomboy,” a highlight of Vile’s excellent 2011 LP, Smoke Ring For My Halo.

Barnett bought the record, one of her first-ever purchases on vinyl, based on a premonition that she would like it — she hadn’t heard Vile’s music before. Once Barnett flipped it over to side two, Vile’s meandering folk-rock narrative about a wayward misfit drew her in. She would lay in bed and listen to the song over and over. Later, when Barnett met her girlfriend, Jen Cloher, Smoke Ring For My Halo soundtracked the formative stages of their relationship.

Barnett paid back the favor by covering “Peeping Tomboy” on Lotta Sea Lice, her forthcoming joint album with Vile due 10/13. Recorded in about a week’s time over the course of two Australian summers, Lotta Sea Lice is a delightful segue for two of the best artists currently working in contemporary rock, presenting a loose and lively collection of charmingly low-key and generous tunes that sparkle with ramshackle perfection. Barnett’s deadpan wit is well-matched by Vile’s every-dude vérité, with the former providing some lyrical sharpness to Vile and the latter supplying wondrously frayed guitar solos to Barnett. Together, they already seem locked in like long-time bandmates who complement each other out of second nature.

“I think [our] music’s similar enough — it’s usually sort of melodic, sort of sensitive, or semi-wordy,” Vile said. “Her style of rock is a little different than my style of rock. But this is more of a folk-rock, kind of organic thing. It’s a little bulkier.”

As comfortable as Barnett and Vile sound dueting throughout Lotta Sea Lice, Vile admits to feeling some jitters before their first session. He initiated the project with Barnett, who became a friend after she opened up for him at a gig in Barnett’s hometown of Melbourne. At that show, Barnett passed along a copy of The Double EP: A Sea Of Split Peas, a compilation of early songs released in 2013. Vile immediately was taken by the first song, “Outta The Woodwork” — a darkly melodic mid-tempo number in which Barnett tells off an unnamed patronizing jerk — which he covers on Lotta Sea Lice.

Vile and Barnett subsequently became pals after hanging out backstage at various music festivals, prompting a brainstorm to approach Barnett about recording a seven-inch together. An enthusiastic and prolific collaborator, Vile has previously recorded with the African “desert rock” band Tinariwin, the folk guitarist Steve Gunn, and Dinosaur Jr.’s J. Mascis, among many others. But when he showed Barnett “Over Everything” — a jangly beauty about the pros and cons of solitude that he wrote with her in mind — while down under promoting his 2015 record B’lieve I’m Goin’ Down, “I thought my head was going to explode,” he confessed.

“I thought it was great,” countered Barnett, who marveled at the song’s unusual structure, particularly the lack of a chorus. “I’ve got this voice, this weird pop thing in my brain, trying to find the chorus. And then I realized months later that it was such a catchy song regardless of that.”