Karen Elson has shared the video for her pensive new single ‘Broken Shadow’. See it first on NME below.

The singer-songwriter has also announced her third studio album ‘Green’ which will be released via Big Yellow Dog on April 29. She’s referred to the contemplative new track, as an “autobiographical song” adding: “the lyrics poured out of me.”

“‘Broken Shadow’ is about recognizing that we’re all flawed, complicated, and a little bit fucked up and making peace with that,” Elson said. “It’s about loving the broken parts of yourself.” The single also features on the Warner Brothers sci-fi romantic comedy, Moonshot.

She continued: “COVID strangely catapulted me into this frame of deep reflection. I did a lot of work to reconcile places in the past I deemed broken or complicated and showed the shadow back to myself. I’m telling the shadow, ‘You’re my friend and a part of me. Let’s continue’.” You can stream the track here.

The haunting music video for ‘Broken Shadow’ was directed by Elson and Nashville-based photographer, Emily Dorio and captured by cinematographer Mika Matinazad.  It features the singer standing solo in a smoke-filled room, strumming her guitar in solitude, glancing into a broken mirror, and letting a snake wrap itself around her neck.

In the ethereal track, she sings about embracing the darker aspects of herself with the lyrics, “when I was young I let the darkness drag me down / but I’m not afraid these days.”

“This song means so much to me,” Elson shared earlier this week on twitter, adding that it “kick-started a new musical chapter” for her.

She co-wrote and produced ‘Green’ with Nashville music mainstays Daniel Tashian and Ian Fitchuk who won multiple Grammy Awards for their work on Kacey Musgraves ‘Golden Hour’.

Elson previously teased ‘Green’ when the upbeat lead single ‘Lightning Strikes’ which acted as the soundtrack for designer Mochino’s retro 2022 fashion campaign.

The record follows her previous full-lengths, 2010’s ‘The Ghost Who Walks’ and 2017’s ‘Double Roses’. In 2020, she dropped the EP ‘Radio Redhead Vol.1’ The title ‘Radio Redhead’ was borrowed from a quarantine Instagram Live series Elson started during lockdown, where she’d livestream a series of cover performances.

“The music feels very vulnerable and intimate,” she said of the covers collection at the time. “These songs are so powerful in their own right. We weren’t trying to make them anything they’re not. Just get down to their marrow and their essence.

Elson continued: “It took us a week to record this EP. Every day we’d approach a different song, break it apart, try to get to the root of the emotion and then build an homage to the original.”