Alysse Gafkjen

Today is a good day because we've got new music from Julien Baker.

She just released a new song called "Faith Healer," which arrived with an accompanying video, serving as the first preview of her upcoming third studio album Little Oblivions, which Baker confirmed today will be released Feb. 26 on Matador Records.

“Put most simply, I think that ‘Faith Healer’ is a song about vices, both the obvious and the more insidious ways that they show up in the human experience," says Baker. "I started writing this song two years ago and it began as a very literal examination of addiction. For awhile, I only had the first verse, which is just a really candid confrontation of the cognitive dissonance a person who struggles with substance abuse can feel—the overwhelming evidence that this substance is harming you, and the counterintuitive but very real craving for the relief it provides. When I revisited the song I started thinking about the parallels between the escapism of substance abuse and the other various means of escapism that had occupied a similar, if less easily identifiable, space in my psyche."

She continues: “There are so many channels and behaviors that we use to placate discomfort unhealthily which exist outside the formal definition of addiction. I (and so many other people) are willing to believe whomever—a political pundit, a preacher, a drug dealer, an energy healer—when they promise healing, and how that willingness, however genuine, might actually impede healing.”

Watch the Daniel Henry-directed video below.