Last month, fantasy of a broken heart announced their debut LP Feats of Engineering (due out September 27 on Dots Per Inch). Composed of Al Nardo and Bailey Wollowitz, who were previously best known for their work with projects like Sloppy Jane, Water From Your Eyes, and This is Lorelei, the album is the first step into the spotlight for the duo. Now fantasy of a broken heart are sharing another preview of the record, a track called ‘Loss.’

fantasy’s sound has already been acknowledged as being difficult to pin down in part due to its sterling commitment to mad-cap maximalism and magpie-like approach to genre, but it’s always anchored by the emotional core of its central relationship. Bailey’s husky baritone whispers, shouts, and croons, Al’s airy vocals twang and soar transcendent, their voices drifting in and out of conversation with each other.

‘Loss’ is a wonderful showcase of that dynamic, careening from silly to sincere, chaotic to serene, achingly beautiful to stridently discordant and back again, with Al and Bailey playing off each other in a call and response that the whole complex composition unfurls around.

Wollowitz says of the song: “There’s always a tension in songwriting between simplicity and excess. Especially in the home digital recording era, it’s hard to ignore an anxious tugging at the endless possibilities of overdubbing and arrangement. Why not put a string section on every song? In these moments of preoccupation, I often came back to the first few Unknown Mortal Orchestra records, which have always inspired me as pieces of work that achieve sonic maximalism with very minimal arrangements; a perfect hybrid between the euphoric peaks of the later Beatles catalogue and the roughest sounding Jay Reatard demo. The song Loss started as a word on a piece of paper and a desire to capture a complex feeling in a simple way. Memory loss, hearing loss, loss of love, loss of a loved one. Getting lost in yourself. This was the first song demoed for the album, and was a turning point for realizing that there was nowhere to hide with being honest about this stuff. By the final mix we had stripped back the layers and left it as it was meant to be: a little song with a lot to say. We also lost some of the drum stems along the way.”