Kim Gordon has always treated sound as both provocation and inquiry, and four decades into her career, that instinct feels sharper than ever. Her third solo album, PLAY ME, arrives March 13, continuing an artistic evolution that refuses comfort or stasis. The lead single, ‘NOT TODAY’, released alongside a striking short film directed by Rodarte founders Kate and Laura Mulleavy with cinematography by Christopher Blauvelt, foregrounds a new tension in Gordon’s voice. “I started singing in a way I hadn’t sung in a long time,” Gordon says. “This other voice came out.”
The video features Gordon in a hand-dyed silk tulle Rodarte dress, custom-made years ago and resurrected for this moment, a fitting symbol of past and present folding together. Sonically, PLAY ME is distilled and immediate, leaning into melodic beats, krautrock motorik rhythms, and focused, fast-moving structures. Produced with longtime collaborator Justin Raisen, the record feels confident and rhythm-driven, with Gordon’s voice and lyrics at the center.
Lyrically, PLAY ME processes modern life’s absurdities: tech dominance, cultural flattening, and political erosion, filtered through dark humor and abstraction. It is both outward-looking and deeply interior, an album that rejects easy conclusions in favor of curiosity, tension, and continued search.
