Australian indie rocker Courtney Barnett has revealed her fourth studio album, Creature of Habit, set for release on March 27. The announcement includes a new single, "Site Unseen," featuring Waxahatchee, and details of an extensive North American tour. This marks her first full-length studio effort since 2021's Things Take Time, Take Time.
Courtney Barnett's upcoming album, Creature of Habit, arrives via Mom+Pop on March 27, following her relocation from Australia to Los Angeles and the closure of her longtime label, Milk! Records, in 2023 amid financial pressures exacerbated by COVID-19 restrictions. The 10-track record builds on the meditative instrumental album End of the Day, released in 2023 as a score for the documentary Anonymous Club, which chronicled Barnett's life and featured compositions with Warpaint drummer Stella Mozgawa.
The lead single, "Stay in Your Lane," dropped in October with a video directed by Alex Ross Perry, depicting Barnett in a surreal surgical setting. Today, Barnett shares "Site Unseen," a duet with Waxahatchee (Katie Crutchfield), accompanied by a music video directed by Juliana and Nicola Giraffe. The mellow indie rock track reflects on embracing change, with lyrics like: "Letting go of everything that might have been/And if we like it here/We’ll stay another year." Barnett explained the song's evolution in a statement: "I tried 3 separate times over 2 years to track this song, and each time it either wasn’t finished or didn’t sound right and each time we had to start again. I kept hearing this really high harmony in my head, so for the fourth and final version, I asked Katie if she’d be into singing it with me. I’m a big Waxahatchee fan. I really love Katie’s songwriting and her voice, so it was an honour to have her sing on ‘Site Unseen.’"
Barnett and Crutchfield have a history of collaboration; Waxahatchee supported Barnett on tour in 2018 and joined her for the Here And There festival in 2022 alongside artists like Lucy Dacus and Sleater-Kinney. In December, Barnett previewed tracks from the album at listening events in London, Berlin, and Paris.
To support Creature of Habit, Barnett embarks on a North American tour in two legs: May dates kick off May 1 at Radio/East in Austin, Texas, hitting cities like Nashville, Brooklyn, and Toronto, with support from acts including Momma, Truman Sinclair, Built to Spill, and Zoh Amba. The August leg resumes August 11 in Cleveland, Ohio, concluding August 29 at Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles.
The tracklist is: 1. Stay in Your Lane 2. Wonder 3. Site Unseen [ft. Waxahatchee] 4. Mostly Patient 5. One Thing at a Time 6. Mantis 7. Sugar Plum 8. Same 9. Great Advice 10. Another Beautiful Day.