Hibou Announces New Album Something Familiar, Shares "Fall Into" Music Video

Hibou, the moniker of Seattle songwriter Peter Michel, returns with a new LP entitled Something Familiar out March 2 via Barsuk Records. The album follows up on the project's 2015 self-titled debut, which Michel recorded in a walk-in closet. This time around he's recorded with a full-band at Chris Walla's Hall of Justice recording studio, but that's not the only change in the project. While most of the material on Hibou was recorded while Michel was still a teenager, there's a newfound sense of maturity on this new release. And with getting older comes new worries to cope with. As such, Something Familiar finds Michel coping with anxiety and depersonalization. Michel elaborates in a press statement:

“Anxiety is an incredibly strange thing, and everyone has different forms of it. I think that songwriting was a really necessary way for me to try to express that, because people would always ask about it: What does it feel like? Describe it. I’d never be able to put it into words. It was such a relief when I began to experiment and communicate the effects of my anxiety with textures and poetry, rather than conversations.”

In the album's first single, "Fall Into", Michel uses the dreamy aesthetics of his previous efforts as a means for sifting through these tumultuous emotions. The accompanying music video echoes these sentiments, with stark shots of Michel sporting a bloody nose and walking through empty fields in a bath robe. His isolation is palpable, seeking out for meaning and peace through splashes of color and dramatic shots of submerging himself in a tub and breaking dishes. Watch the video in full below.