Listen to Panda Bear’s New Doppler-Dub Anthem “Dolphin”

Panda Bear, aka Noah Lennox of legendary weirdo-pop stars Animal Collective, has shared “Dolphin,” the first single off his forthcoming album Buoys, out Feb. 8, 2019, on Domino Records.

While recording Buoys, Lennox said he was moved to seek sounds that would “feel familiar to a young person’s ears.” To help him out on that front, he reached out to Rusty Santos, who had helped produce Lennox’s landmark Person Pitch a decade earlier. Santos’ heavy involvement in trap and reggaeton production brought the Chilean DJ Lizz and the Portuguese musician Dino D’Santiago into the fold. The result of that melting pot of musical knowledge is “Dolphin,” a song that’s dripping with experimental glee.

The song rides on waves of compressed island guitars while drip-drop effects that wouldn’t be all that out of place as part of a DJ tag dapple the song left and right. It’s slow-moving and graceful, a creature coursing through the digital slipstream. “The last three records felt like a chapter to me, and this feels like the beginning of something new,” Lennox said in a statement. That seems like a fair assessment. It’s still weird, just in a different way.

Panda Bear will be touring Australia in December, with more dates to follow. Find his Australia dates further down, along with the Buoys album art and tracklist.

Watch the video for “Dolphin” below, featuring digital animation from Crash Override.