Cigar Cigarette is the synthy pseudonym of musician Chris McLaughlin who, in addition to making his own music, is an in-demand engineer, having worked on Kanye West’s Sunday Service albums, as well as records by Naeem, Bon Iver, Fabrizio Moretti of The Strokes, Antibalas and more. Having released just a few singles so far, Cigar Cigarette’s latest offering is a cover of Cyndi Lauper’s 1984 #1 hit “Time After Time.” For it he’s teamed with Elyse Winn of Italians Do it Better duo MOTHERMARY.

It’s a radically reworked version of the song, with hushed vocals and a dark, rain-soaked sheen. Add in pounding drums and fuzzed-out synths, it’s a covertly heavy track. “We wanted to transpose Cyndi Lauper’s vignettes of New York life onto an audio collage that is suited to a dust-covered, post-apocalyptic city,” Chris tells us. “To emphasize the mirroring in the title we used unanchored percussive drones and staggered repetitive hits. That combined with the wall of booming live drums, thick modular synth, distorted bass and electric guitar all coalesce to repeat the same part, as if the source of this time loop we’re living in is finally surfacing from deep within the subway tunnels and bursting out of the asphalt on 7th avenue into an empty and abandoned Times Square.”

Cigar Cigarette x MOTHERMARY’s “Time After Time” premieres in this post and you can check it out the visualizer below. It will be available on all digital platforms on April 7.