One of our favorite female singer-songwriters, the always-earnest Sharon Van Etten, performed at the recent Pickathon music festival. While there, Van Etten performed an unplugged version of her trembling new song Tarifa for KEXP.  Van Etten explained the song thus:  “this next song is about a vacation, it’s a new one that we’ve been working on, it’s call Tarifa….it’s [in Spain] on a f!@$ing cliff overlooking Morocco,  but it is amazing – in the middle of nowhere. There was a bunch of bulls, that I was afraid of, in the pasture next to me, but they could give a shit that I was there. They didn’t try to run me over or anything weird. I had to ask my boyfriend, I was like ‘can I wear red? Are they gonna charge at me?’ They didn’t. I tried it out. It was fine. Anyway, this song is about that.” Go figure.

After, listen to one of her best, Give Out. And while you’re at it, go over and buy a Van Etten-made t-shirt (shown at bottom) to support a good cause: The Yellow Bird Project.