We’ve been hearing word from the new-female-singers cognoscenti that Phoebe Bridgers was another new phenom to check out (and to add to the talented quiver of Julien Baker, Torres, Alyeska, Miya Folick, Laney Jones, etc.). But then we got distracted. No more.

Check out Phoebe Bridgers’ exquisite new song Smoke Signals below. We know Bridgers has been hanging with the right people. Ryan Adams has produced her and compared her to Bob Dylan, and she’s been opening on tour for Conor Oberst (who also, hmmm…wrote his own stellar Smoke Signals song). But none of that prepared us for the depth and subtlety of Smoke Signals.

Bridgers apparently wrote Smoke Signals in a cabin last spring (“Bon Printemps“?). We love everything about the song, including the single-note vibrato guitar that introduces the swelling strings, but especially its lyrical incisions (see lyrics at bottom). The following stanza, with its poesy and double- and triple- entendres, is our favorite of the year so far:

“I want to live at the Holiday Inn where somebody else makes the bed
We’ll watch TV while the lights on the street
Put all the stars to death
It’s been on my mind since Bowie died
Just checking out to hide from life”

We’ve read the tea leaves and now the smoke signals, and now its your turn to turn your attention to the rising Phoebe Bridgers.

You can check out more of her superb songs HERE.

Smoke Signals:

“I went with you up to
the place you grew up in
we spent a week in the cold
Just long enough to
“Walden” it with you
Any longer, it would have got old

Singing “Ace of Spades” from when Lemmy died
But nothing’s changed
LA’s all right
Sleeping in my bed again and getting in my head
And then walk around the reservoir.

You, you must have been looking for me.
Sending smoke signals
Pelicans circling
Burning trash out on the beach

One of your eyes is always half-shut
Something happened when you were a kid
I didn’t know you then
And I’ll never understand
why it feels like I did

“How Soon Is Now” in an ‘80s sedan
You slept inside of it because your dad
Lived in a campground in the back of a van
You said that song will creep you out until you’re dead

And you must have been looking for me.
Sending smoke signals
Pelicans circling
Burning trash out on the beach

I want to live at the Holiday Inn where somebody else makes the bed
We’ll watch TV while the lights on the street
Put all the stars to death
It’s been on my mind since Bowie died
Just checking out to hide from life

And all of our problems
I’m gonna solve ‘em
With you riding shot-gun
Speeding, ‘cause fuck the cops.

And you, you must have been looking for me.
Sending smoke signals
Pelicans circling
Burning trash out on the beach

I buried a hatchet
It’s coming up lavender
The future’s unwritten
The past is a corridor
I’m at the exit looking back through the hall
You are anonymous
I am a concrete wall.”