Grimes has returned with “Player of Games,” which marks the first song off her new project, Book 1. Update — December 22nd: Grimes has now unveiled the official “Player of Games” music video. Directed by Anton Tammi, it finds the singer and a character called the Dark Knight fighting with swords and battling over a chessboard. Watch it below.
Grimes first teased the song on Instagram on December 1st with a video of her, naturally, playing video games. That seems straightforward enough, but the clip also featured an unknown player donning some kind of spacesuit of armor, which tracks with her whole “Martian Technocracy” aesthetic.
In keeping with the artist’s style, the single builds from crowning, bass-heavy synths to a club beat, with Grimes’ famous chipmunk vocals tying it all together.
“Player of Games” follows “A Drug from God,” the club song the experimental pop artist recently released with Chris Lake. That track marked the debut of NPC, the “AI Girl Group” Grimes launched so she could “create as other people in order to reduce the psychic pain of being in the public eye.” Before that, she shared the song “LOVE” in response to online hate.
A press release provided no further details on Book 1, but Grimes previously said she was working on a lesbian A.I. space opera.
