Sharon Van Etten Shares Video for New Song “Seventeen”

Sharon Van Etten’s new album, Remind Me Tomorrow, is almost here. Her first LP since 2014’s Are We There, it’s out Friday, Jan. 18, on Jagjaguwar. Today (Jan. 8), the singer/songwriter-turned-rockstar shared the third single from the album, “Seventeen,” and an accompanying video directed by Maureen Towey, which you can watch below.

The intensity of “Seventeen” matches that of the two previously released singles, “Comeback Kid” and “Jupiter 4.” We’ve always counted on Van Etten to bring excellent lyrics and brooding melodies to the table, but we’ve never heard her like this—emboldened and chasing a darker, more driving strand of rock ‘n’ roll. “Seventeen” is almost Springsteen-esque in its grandiosity and nostalgia, though it’s more charged. The track’s companion video is, as Van Etten put it in a tweet, a “love letter” to New York City. In the clip, Van Etten chases a perfectly cast “shadow” of her former self (seriously—it’s eerie how similar these two look) around NYC, reckoning with her past and remembering when “she used to be 17.” The video is sentimental, but Van Etten is skeptical of youth’s glow, too: “I used to feel free, or was it just a dream?” she sings.

Here’s what Towey said about the video: