“Nothing’s really happened like I thought it would,” Justin Vernon admits on “S P E Y S I D E,” the first single from Bon Iver’s forthcoming SABLE, EP. An understatement, perhaps, considering Vernon’s current position: Grammy winner, festival headliner, Taylor Swift co-writer, presidential candidate rally booster. With each subsequent release, Vernon has transformed Bon Iver’s sound, building his songs into innovative, impressionistic collages with lyrics written in his uniquely evocative version of the English language. It was enough to get lost in.

But “S P E Y S I D E”—containing little more than Vernon’s rich voice and acoustic guitar, along with some understated viola—loses none of its power for its gentle simplicity. It’s a lonely song of apology, melodic and interior—impressive not due to a cast of collaborators or the lush orchestration or electronic experimentation Vernon has favored as of late, but as a reminder of how little he needs to conjure a specific, powerful kind of wistfulness. “Man, I’m so sorry,” he sings toward the end: One of the most plain-spoken and unadorned lines in his career, in a song that’s nevertheless among his most deeply felt.