We Are Scientists have shared their first new music of 2022, ‘Operator Error’.

The new single is said to precede more news that is to be revealed “shortly”. The New York duo’s latest album was last year’s ‘Huffy’.

Bassist Chris Cain said of the new track: “It starts with what sounds like a countdown timer for some kind of destructive alien device, but ends up being a countdown timer for one of the punchiest little pop songs on Earth. So the usual first-listen reaction is joy mixed with quite a bit of relief.”

“I have a tendency to deliver hot takes and to get extraordinarily overheated about utterly inconsequential things,” singer and guitarist Keith Murray said of the song, which nods to his “big mouth”.

Murray continued: “I got into a multi-hour argument over whether Top Gun: Maverick is a halfway decent movie. Maybe it’s weird, then, that I also tend to be pretty sanguine over big issues. It’s fairly hard to drag me into a heated fight, or to get me to say something that I’ll later come to regret.

“On important matters, I like to keep quiet, to listen to everyone else’s take, and to silently build my own bullet-proof argument, which nobody else will ever hear. I operate in dual modes – one where I’m apt to deliver my dumb opinion with little provocation, and one in which it’s almost impossible to get me to say what I’m really thinking. It’s probably a pretty frustrating character trait for the people who are trying to engage me in consequential conversation, and I apologise to my friends and my enemies, alike.”

Cain added: “This song gets right to the point, and then stays there. It makes other songs I hear these days sound bloated, baroque, and busted.

“Paramedics are going to start playing the chorus instead of checking vital signs: if the patient doesn’t sing along, they can safely be pronounced dead. I like songs like this.”

Speaking to NME in 2019, We Are Scientists talked about their origins in New York in 2005. “That era in New York City, where we’d moved just a couple of years prior, was a really fertile music scene,” explained Chris Cain.

“There were a lot of bands that were incredibly inspiring to be around and see in their early days, like The Strokes and Yeah Yeah Yeahs. We definitely felt like our songs were capable of competing in that world.”