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Emel Mathlouthi has announced the release of her new album Everywhere We Looked Was Burning, out September 27 via Partisan Records. For the first time, Emel sings almost entirely in English after previously only recording a handful of tracks in the language. The choice was informed by settling in New York with her family, discovering the “essential imagery” of poets Rainer Maria Rilke, T.S. Elliot, and John Ashbury, and “thinking back to how music in English was so important to me growing up.” She initially rented a house in Woodstock, NY and set off to “write about nature as well as the beauty and struggle of these times.”

Emel isn't interested in being typecast as an exotic North African. For people who still haven't heard her ground her honeyed vocals in heavy, distorted electronics, and whose theatrical stage presence and arresting visuals call to mind the likes of Kate Bush and Björk — it's still useful to know how she rose onto stages across the world and become an anthemic voice during the Arab Spring. NPR