Ra Ra Riot Announce ‘Need Your Light,’ Share Single 'Water'

Ra Ra Riot have announced they will return with their fourth album, Need Your Light, in February. Today (Nov. 16), they share “Water,” a collaboration with Vampire Weekend’s Rostam Batmanglij. Take a listen above.

Batmanglij produced “Water” and the semi-title track, “I Need Your Light,” both of which will appear on the forthcoming album when it lands in stores on Feb. 19 via Barsuk Records. Batmanglij has previously worked with Ra Ra Riot frontman Wes Miles on the side project, Discovery, and their 2009 debut, LP. In a press release, the Vampire Weekend keyboardist said their work together on Need Your Light harkens back to that joint venture:

Between 2005-2009, Wes and I wrote an album together in snatched moments in our lives... That record (the Discovery LP) seemed to benefit from us having the freedom to pick it up and put it down. In January of this year, Wes came to stay with me, and we set out to write songs again. We didn't know where it would take us. There was something I'd heard in Wes's singing in the earliest days of seeing Ra Ra Riot live that I felt had never quite been captured on record. There was our shared love of U2's 'Achtung Baby,' something that having listened to the music we've recorded in our lives thus far you might not know about. And also this obsession with writing songs that tell stories. So we spent five days writing just two songs- "Water" and "I Need Your Light"- and I think we found that same freedom in making these songs that we had found years ago making the Discovery record, not knowing where it would take us.

Need Your Light -- the rest of which was produced by Ryan Hadlock (Brandi Carlile, the Lumineers) -- follows the baroque-pop outfit’s 2013 full-length, Beta Love. You can pre-order it now over at iTunes; check out the track list and cover art below:

Need Your Light Track List
1. "Water"
2. "Absolutely"
3. "Foreign Lovers"
4. "I Need Your Light"
5. "Bad Times"
6. "Call Me Out"
7. "Instant Breakup"
8. "Every Time I'm Ready to Hug"
9. "Bouncy Castle"
10. "Suckers"

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