FADER PREMIERE
Last summer, Xiu Xiu frontman Jamie Stewart and producer Shahzad Ismaily spent roughly 24 hours at the beautifully remote Icelandic studio of Sigur Rós recording covers of American and Caribbean spirituals from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He's releasing nine of them as an album called Unclouded Sky on this year's Record Store Day; the title track, streaming below, is a fast-plucked interpretation of the oft-covered standard "Uncloudy Day." Here, Stewart abandons the unnerving gruffness of the Xiu Xiu catalog and adopts a weightless, unsteady, half-whispered timbre. Unclouded Sky comes out April 19th on Polyvinyl.
Stream: Xiu Xiu, "Unclouded Sky"
