Father John Misty Crosses Over in Stop-Motion Video for New Single “Please Don’t Die”

Father John Misty’s fourth album God’s Favorite Customer is right around the corner, and ahead of its Friday, June 1 release via Sub Pop and Bella Union, the artist legally known as Josh Tillman has shared the fourth single and second video from his new record, the grim but ultimately hopeful “Please Don’t Die.”

The single’s stop-motion video is Tillman’s second collaboration with director Chris Hopewell, who also helmed the video for “Things It Would Have Been Helpful to Know Before the Revolution,” off Tillman’s 2017 LP Pure Comedy. The darkly comic “Please Don’t Die” video, like the “Mr. Tillman” video before it, finds Tillman holed up in a hotel, this time on “one more wasted morning” he spends wallowing in sorrow and substances in the wake of an unbearable heartbreak. His “joyless joy ride” takes him beyond rock bottom and into the earth, where Tillman boards the equivalent of Charon’s ferry, fraternizes with the dead and marches to the edge of his own grave. Only an almost Princess Leia-like warrior princess is able to save him from his fate—and from himself—personifying the caring voice in the song who implores Tillman’s narrator, “You’re all that I have, so please don’t die / Wherever you are tonight.”

Tillman has referred to God’s Favorite Customer as “a heartache album,” and the record’s advance tracks have all held true to that characterization. Lead single “Mr. Tillman” reads like the self-destructive bender before the regretful hangover of “Please Don’t Die,” while “Just Dumb Enough to Try” and “Disappointing Diamonds are the Rarest of Them All” find Tillman performing a frank post-mortem on his broken relationship. The album finds Tillman growing ever further beyond his Father John Misty persona, baring his soul more sincerely than ever while occupying a musical space somewhere between the existential piano ballads of Pure Comedy and the rollicking rock songs of Fear Fun and I Love You, Honeybear. It’s easily one of Paste’s most anticipated albums of June, and the wait is almost over.

Again, God’s Favorite Customer is out this Friday, June 1. Watch the “Please Don’t Die” video below and listen to a Father John Misty performance from the Paste archives below. Tillman is currently touring the world in support of his new record—find his full show slate right here.