Before Sky Ferreira was finally, unceremoniously dropped from Capitol Records in late 2023, fans were still buying time on Times Square billboards and flying plane banners calling for her freedom. And when Ferreira appeared as the surprise opener for Kevin Abstract’s Coachella set this April—performing a synth-washed cover of Lady A’s “Need You Now”—it was like every second we’d been without her was suddenly palpable.

Ferreira feels it too. “People keep telling me I need to let go of the past, but the past is still very much my present,” she shared in an interview with Vogue earlier this month. On “Leash,” her new single for the Nicole Kidman-starring Babygirl, Ferreira blurs the borders between the film’s BDSM office relationship and the lingering scars from her own time at Capitol: “Chains are heavy, pull me close to you/Every scrape leads me back to you.” Striking a midpoint between her last two singles—the great, brooding “Downhill Lullaby” and 2022’s underwhelming “Don’t Forget”—“Leash” boasts the most euphoric chorus since anything off her lone LP, Night Time, My Time, redolent of the gothic grandeur of Siouxie and the Banshees’ “Kiss Them For Me.”

And yet, it’s hard to feel entirely optimistic. Night Time’s projected follow-up, Masochism, has been teased since 2015—first to the point of myth, then to the point of meme. You get the sense we might only have “Leash” at all because of the two-and-a-half week deadline Ferreira received from A24 and Babygirl director Halina Reijn. After the song’s first chorus, she counts down from five to one—a fitting metaphor for a career defined by anticipation, never quite managing to hit blastoff.