UPDATE: Radiohead Completely Disappears From The Internet

After going A.W.O.L a few days ago it looks like Radiohead have dropped the lead single of their ninth studio album. Last night Australian time the band’s Instagram account posted two claymation videos, one of a bird chirping and one of a medieval witch burning ceremony. These short clips seem to be snippets from the claymation music video (watch below) for a new track Burn The Witch, which considering all things surely is the latest single from the UK alt-rock legends.

Burn The Witch sees the band continue their foray deeper into electronic pop, but somehow still sound uniquely like Radiohead. Frontman Thom Yorke’s delicate always-slightly-sad vocals soar like “a low flying panic attack” over a staccato-driven string melody, while Colin Greenwood’s bass takes on many subtle effects to be the overall glue between the many moving parts of the track. It wouldn’t be a Radiohead song without producing something slightly unnerving, and the last 40 seconds of the song sound like the lead up to a stabbing in a horror movie. Buy/stream the song HERE

It’s nowhere near the 90’s rock Radiohead many fans grew up with, but it’s a quality track by a band that’ll never do what’s expected, and isn’t that the best part of Thom Yorke’s band of quirky gentlemen? Radiohead’s management company Courtyard Management have previously said the new album, the follow-up to the very experimental 2011 ‘The King of Limbs’, would be released in June.

A few days ago the British group pretty much disappeared from the Internet, deleting all their social media history and the content on their website. The radical move added even more fuel to the rumour mill and speculation surround the release of their ninth studio album.

The band reportedly sent out cryptic leaflets in the mail, while radiohead.com, @Radiohead, and facebook.com/radiohead lay dormant, as if the Thom Yorke & Co. never existed – cue The X-Files theme.

Some UK Radiohead fans who previously purchased mail orders received cards in the mail emblazoned with the band’s bear logo and the words, “Sing the song of sixpence that goes ‘Burn the witch’. We know where you live”.

Known for their unorthodox methods for releasing and even purchasing their music, discussions amongst Radiohead fans about how the ninth album will be released has so far suggested everything from a “surprise webcast” to “directly into my veins”.

Radiohead’s 2007 album ‘In Rainbows’ allowed fans to pay-what-they-want, while Yorke personally headed out Radiohead-themed newspapers at records stores to promote ‘The King of Limbs’ and his solo project Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes was released entirely onto pirating platform BitTorrent.

Radiohead burst onto the British grunge scene in the early nineties with debut album ‘Pablo Honey’, which featured the immortal grunge anthem Creep. Radiohead have gone onto achieve international acclaim with their highly praised 1997 alt-rock album ‘OK Computer’, featuring the brilliantly epic Paranoid Android, to their progression into electronica on ‘The King of Limbs’.

Click HERE to see how the internet responded to Radiohead’s digital disappearance (LOLS)