Philadelphia rock quartet Speedy Ortiz recently announced its long-awaited new album entitled Rabbit Rabbit. The band previewed its first record in 5+ years by sharing “Scabs” and “You S02,” and today Speedy Ortiz shares its next single. “Plus One” features jagged-cliff-dwelling riffs and thundering drums, and is accompanied by a campy horror homage from Dylan Mars Greenberg. But while the video is lighthearted, the song finds Dupuis exploring a traumatic childhood experience in her songwriting for the first time.

Dupuis on “Plus One”:

I love touring, but the workaholism it encourages has been a convenient way to repress my feelings. In the pandemic, I found myself ruminating on my estrangement from an abusive family member. I’ve used my songwriting to process other experiences of violence, but had not broached these memories until Rabbit Rabbit. Being able to work on old trauma in therapy and in my writing has helped my boundaries elsewhere, and taught me to move on from exploitative relationships.

That’s what “Plus One” is about, and it came out pretty quickly as a sad acoustic waltz. I was sitting on the floor of an empty living room, mid-move, and the bare surroundings added a liminal starkness, though some of the imagery is inspired by scenes from West Philly that summer. When I went back to do pre-production, Texan post-hardcore was in my head, so I tried to channel At the Drive-In and Trail of Dead, bands that inspired me as a teen.

We made the video with director Dylan Mars Greenberg, whose campiness and B-movie expertise was a perfect fit for the band’s also very campy videography. We’ve done a ton of horror homages but had never paid tribute to an old school monster movie. Dylan’s pet bunny Voodoo was a perfect Godzilla-sized star—a cuddly rabbit who’s mad as hell and not going to take it anymore.