Grammy-nominated neo soul group Hiatus Kaiyote, following the release of their third studio album Mood Valiant in June, is back with new haunting single ‘Canopic Jar’.

‘Canopic Jar’, the brand new single by Australian funk-soul band Hiatus Kaiyote, features spooky thematic elements. The song dives deep into the darkest corners of one’s mind.

Lead singer Nai Palm explains,

“A canopic jar is an ancient artifact from Egypt. When they preserved the body through mummification for the afterlife, the organs were contained in a canopic jar.  I used this image of preserving something in this lifetime to be accessed in another as a metaphor for an unobtainable relationship, to re-appear throughout the ages because circumstances won’t allow it this time around.”

He comments on the Halloween sonic elements,

“I am obsessed with Halloween playlists, and keeping in the vein of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller”, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’s “Feast of the Mau Mau”, and our own “Swamp Thing” had real wolves that I recorded after visiting a wolf sanctuary in Upstate New York. Bender added harrowing cello recorded in an empty water tank, Simon went full Phantom of the Opera organ-style, and Perrin’s drum tones sound like a werewolf-gorilla hybrid smashing through a cityscape.  We basically like to create tiny sonic movies with each song we make.

Ironically, the person the song was written about is now my partner, and he added the Vincent Price villain laugh at the end of the song under the pseudonym Eddy Knife Hands, which kinda wraps the witchy sonic spell up nicely, haha.”

After six years of touring, writing, and recording, including a chance to work with Brazilian arranger Arthur Verocai in 2019, Hiatus Kaiyote released their critically-acclaimed third album Mood Valiant.

The album, , featured singles including ‘

Consisting of singer Naomi “Nai Palm” Saalfield, bassist Paul Bender, keyboardist Simon Mavin, and drummer Perrin Moss, the band’s latest full-length is described by The New York Times as “life-affirming, genre-defying cosmic soul.”

Mood Valiant featured singles ‘Get Sun’, ‘Chivalry Is Not Dead’, and ‘Red Room’.

Photo credit: Claudia Sangiorgi Dalimore