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Finally! Yeasayer has been teasing us for weeks on their Twitter about new releases, and the fans wise enough to be on their mailing list received a juicy new single in their mailboxes yesterday. Biology people…ready to be stimulated? “Henrietta” is inspired by Henrietta Lacks, a 1950′s woman whose cells were cultured and are still used widely in medical research. Yeasayer’s Chris Keating goes on to explain that her cells “were somehow used in the polio vaccine, too, so basically this woman’s cells still exist. It’s an interesting story. So we turned it into a dubbed-out pseudo-science-fiction song.” Yeasayer has described their entire upcoming album as a sort of “a demented R&B record,” and say two main influences for the new record are Aaliyah and David Bowie. Leave it to Yeasayer to prompt me to use the words “biology,” “polio,” “Aaliyah,” and “David Bowie” in the same post. Enjoy!

“oh, Henrietta / we can live on forever”