Ben Howard Drops Nautical New Single ‘Crowhurst’s Meme’

Ben Howard has dropped “Crowhurst’s Meme,” the second single from his upcoming album Collections From the Whiteout, out March 26th via Republic Records.

Featuring Yussef Dayes, the song is accompanied by a video that portrays distorted images of Howard in a field as the track ebbs and flows with chaotic synths. “Saccharine party baby/Laughing and ha horrah!” he sings. “Well, what’s a riverbed sleep?/Coveting, cheating.”

“Crowhurst’s Meme” is about Donald Crowhurst, a British businessman who died at sea in 1969. “This song was firstly inspired by a wonky synth guitar part that I had which had a kind of seasick quality to it, which in my head had a tenuous link to the Donald Crowhurst story — the famous tale of the amateur British sailor who died whilst sailing around the world,” Howard said in a statement. “These two things seemed to marry and so it became a sort of exploration of the undocumented universal side of the story.”

“Crowhurst’s Meme” follows the lead single “What a Day.” Collections From the Whiteout, his fourth LP, was co-produced by the National’s Aaron Dessner. It’s currently available for preorder now.