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Hear The Previously Unreleased Beach House Song, 'Chariot'

Back in 2015, Beach House couldn't release enough music. No sooner had fans begun to digest the terrific Depression Cherry — its title a perfect summation of the Baltimore dream-pop duo's mix of darkness and light — than Beach House returned with a follow-up, Thank Your Lucky Stars, a mere two months later.

On June 30, the band returns yet again with a collection of new-old songs, some of which will sound more familiar than others. The self-explanatorily titled B-Sides And Rarities will assemble a career-spanning mix of tracks left off Beach House's six albums — with, it turns out, two never-before-heard songs. Both of them, "Baseball Diamond" and "Chariot," were recorded during the fruitful sessions that produced Beach House's two most recent records, while the rest date back as far as 2005.

Of course, "Chariot" is never-before-heard no longer. It's out today and it's a gorgeous bit of bleary, deliberately paced balladeering.

B-Sides And Rarities is due out June 30 via Sub Pop.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Stephen Thompson is a writer, editor and reviewer for NPR Music, where he speaks into any microphone that will have him and appears as a frequent panelist on All Songs Considered. Since 2010, Thompson has been a fixture on the NPR roundtable podcast Pop Culture Happy Hour, which he created and developed with NPR correspondent Linda Holmes. In 2008, he and Bob Boilen created the NPR Music video series Tiny Desk Concerts, in which musicians perform at Boilen's desk. (To be more specific, Thompson had the idea, which took seconds, while Boilen created the series, which took years. Thompson will insist upon equal billing until the day he dies.)