listen to The The's first single in 15 years, “You Can’t Stop What’s Coming”

Matt Johnson is releasing the first new The The single in 15 years, “You Can’t Stop What’s Coming,” on Record Store Day (4/22). Johnson was on Steve Lemacq’s BBC 6 Music show on Wednesday to premiere the song and talk about what he’s up to. The song, which was recorded live and filmed for new documentary The Inertia Variations, was written about Matt’s brother Andy, who designed most of the The The sleeves and died last year from a brain tumor:

During the process when he was unwell, I spent a lot of time by myself, just sit and reflect…by the keyboard, reflecting, playing this little motif. It was this little melody and chord sequence, on a Fender Rhodes sound, and it just seemed to suit the mood that I was in. When I came to write the song, I needed to write a song for the documentary, that little melody that I’d been carrying around as a comfort blanket…blossomed into this song.

The song features The The members Zeke Manyika on percussion, James Eller on bass, as well as onetime member and longtime friend Johnny Marr on guitar. If you dig Mind Bomb / Dusk era The The, this should excite you. You can listen to “You Can’t Stop Whats Coming” over at the BBC — the interview starts at 1:11:40 and the song is at 1:21:30.

More on the song and the documentary: “The track is taken from The Inertia Variations, an 84-minute documentary film directed by Johanna St Michaels, which forms part of a wider multimedia project inspired by the poem of the same name by British-born, Los Angeles based poet John Tottenham.” You can watch a trailer for The Inertia Variations below.

Matt Johnson also told Steve Lemacq to look for more The The music later this year. Very good news.