Lana Del Rey has shared a new single, ‘White Feather Hawk Tail Deer Hunter’, from her upcoming album ‘Stove’ – listen here.
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The singer wrote the song alongside her husband, sister and brother-in-law, and she produced it alongside frequent collaborator Jack Antonoff. A ghostly, minimalist ballad that blends Gothic country with orchestral pop, it features Del Rey’s theatrical sprechgesang in love song form.
“He’s my white feather hawk tail deer hunter / Before I met him, wore a bow over three summers,” she sings, “Now it’s a ribbon ’round my neck, and it’s cherry-coloured / I’ve just been baking, waitin’ on a spirit hunter.”
The chorus takes on a lighthearted tone with Del Rey’s “Whoopsie daisy, yoo hoo,” before she discusses her cooking skills: “I imagine you do / Know how absolutely bad I’m with an oven”.
The self-shot music video comes out tomorrow (February 18), and you can listen to it on streaming platforms in the meantime.
‘White Feather Hawk Tail Deer Hunter’ is the third track to be shared from ‘Stove’, after Del Rey released ‘Henry, Come On’ and ‘Bluebird’ last year. Earlier this month she revealed that ‘Stove’ is set for release in about three months, and at the same time she said she was “really happy” about ‘White Feather Hawk Tail Deer Hunter’, explaining that she and Antonoff “finally found that magical chord”.
March will mark three years since the release of Del Rey’s most recent album, 2023’s ‘Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd’. NME gave the album four stars, writing: “In many ways, she is a documentarian capturing angles that aren’t just bright and beautiful.
“Her ninth studio album is another testament to that approach. On ‘… Ocean Blvd’, she opens up on her life now, pondering the big questions and contemplating family, home and her future. The songs cross-reference each other, looping back to earlier thoughts and feelings, making it feel like you’re with her in her day-to-day as she muses on these weighty topics.”
‘Stove’, meanwhile, was first announced in January 2024 under the name ‘Lasso’, with Del Rey planning to release it later that year. Her first full-length foray into country music, it came after a few years of the singer teasing a move towards the genre.
In 2021, she said that she’d recorded an entire cover album of country songs and described some of her previous singles, including 2011’s ‘Video Games’, as being “kind of country”. In 2023, she performed covers of ‘Stand By Your Man’ and ‘Unchained Melody’, and released a cover of ‘Take Me Home, Country Roads’.
In 2024, she told NME about the upcoming album, “When I gave Jack Antonoff his award for Best Producer Of The Year [at the 2024 Grammys], I said, ‘Welcome Nashville to Hollywood and Hollywood, welcome to Nashville because the music business has gone, gone country. And it went silent; 5000 people, dead silent. Then the next week, we had three major artists announce big country albums. So where’s ‘Lasso’ going? I really have no idea now!”
About the wait for the album, she said later that year that “all the songs have been Americana and I want to wait to see what the musical atmosphere feels like”.
She went on to change the name of ‘Lasso’ to ‘The Right Person Will Stay’, and then in August last year she announced another name change to ‘Stove’. She told W that the album was set to arrive last spring but that the release date was pushed back when she decided to add six more songs to the tracklist.
Speaking of the new additions, she told the outlet: “They were more autobiographical than I thought, and that took more time”. She also shared insight into the overarching sound of album 10, saying that “the majority of the album will have a country flair.”
Also in the interview, Del Rey said that one of the songs on the new album, ‘Stars Fell on Alabama’, was written about her husband, Louisiana alligator swamp tour guide Jeremy Dufrene.
“I open my show with that song,” she shared, “Jeremy is the most impactful person in my life. He’s quiet in public, but around me he talks all the time.”
