THAO has released “Fossils,” her first new single in six years, and the song marks her return to Kill Rock Stars. After laying Thao & The Get Down Stay Down to rest in 2021, she had kept moving in smaller steps, with “Ambition” the following year and then a Björk cover.
Now she is back with a record that sounds like a reset and a reckoning at once. THAO called “Fossils” both a red-flag warning and an encouragement, a song that looks hard at fear, isolation and the habits people build to keep themselves safe while still arguing that change is possible.
She said she can see how “I and we will have reached the end, frozen in these protective stances,” adding that “The danger of underliving our lives is real, is in every isolationist choice we make.” The point is not abstract. It is the kind of self-guarding that can feel like wisdom in the moment and loss later on.
That is why the track lands with its strongest push at the end, where the tune opens into a triumphant singalong. The moment brings in co-producers Merrill Garbus and Nate Brenner of Tune-Yards, along with THAO’s Bay Area Monday Night Dinner crew, including chef and Salt Fat Acid Heat author Samin Nosrat, writer Sarah Rich and KQED Forum host Alexis Madrigal. Friends, their children, colleagues and fans also sent in recordings, turning the finish into a collective answer to the song’s warning.
THAO said it takes “enormous amounts of work” to metabolize fear instead of living inside it, and that it is easy to slip into self-protection. That makes “Fossils” less a comeback single than a statement of position: a return built on refusing to stay frozen. The music video, directed by Linda Mai Green, arrives as the song reintroduces her to listeners ahead of a run of tour dates that begins 06/13 in Decatur, GA, and ends 06/26 in Atlantic City, NJ.
