Rodes Rollins’ Mystery Man will shoot you down in the dead of night

You heard it here first, the final four months of 2018 belong to the cowboy. As autumn rides summer out of town on lightening hooves, a new wave of Western-inspired music is taking the place of the summer bangers that ruled the heatwave. First came Mitski’s spectacular new album Be The Cowboy, then Conner Youngblood’s atmospheric Cheyenne, even the viral success of Doja Cat’s ‘Moo’ suggests a growing fascination with bovine-adjacent activity. Yet if you want real proof of the coming dawn of what will inevitably be labelled ‘cowboy core’, look no further than the new single from singer-songwriter Rodes Rollins.

Premiering on Notion today, ‘Mystery Man’ sees Rollins tell the tale of a mythical cowboy on the run. Moving by night and taking out all those who stand in his way, the mystery man of Rollins’ song fills the same role as characters like Nick Cave’s ‘Stagger Lee’ and King Gizzard and the Wizard Lizard’s ‘Eyes Like The Sky’. Bells jangle and drums stomp in the background of the track as Rollins narrates the story with a psychedelic coolness. Born from a short story Rollins wrote about an abandoned town in the wild west and inspired by the work of Latin songwriters like Rodrigo Amarante, ‘Mystery Man’ will make you want to drop acid, strap on your boots and head to your nearest desert.

Rollins dropped her debut EP last year and has picked up support from the likes of Warpaint and Portugal, The Man, ‘Mystery Man’ is the latest track from her upcoming release Velvet. Speaking about the track Rollins said “I approached writing this song in a different way than I’ve ever done before. I literally wrote a short story about an abandoned desert town, where there was a fugitive on the run – that was my “Mystery Man” character. Once I was done writing the story, I highlighted the lines I really loved and began writing the song.” Listen to ‘Mystery Man’ below.