Photo by Shervin Lainez

“Happy birthday to you,” sings Florence Shaw in the opening moments of “Sliced by a Fingernail”. To her point, it has been three months since the release of the band’s sharp, electric-wavering third album, Secret Love. The new single from the South London post-punk band is continuation in the singer’s impressionist violence against the outside world — here, imagining herself hiding away from it in a giant flower, only to be spliced by an encroaching cuticle. Though, it’s also resoundingly prickly in the way the quartet separate this listen into its own stem, enriching fertile existentialism with buzzsawing hardcore riffage, wavering post-punk currents, as well plumes toward a quasi stoner metal air in its guitar dynamics. “Who wants to be / At the center of a bud / Of a peony? / I long to be / Concealed / Under disco lights,” Shaw blankets herself from the abrasions. Perhaps that’s why it sounds like anything but a dance floor?

Directed by: BULLYACHE

Dry Cleaning’s “Sliced by a Fingernail” single is available now on 4AD.