Hayley Williams, known best as the lead singer of Paramore, has announced her debut solo LP, Petals for Armor, due out May 8th. On Wednesday, she released her lead single from the album, called “Simmer.”
The accompanying Warren Fu-directed short film for the song was written by Williams and her Paramore bandmates Taylor York (who also produced the clip) and Joey Howard, along with Fu and creative director Lindsey Byrnes. The horror-inspired clip shows Williams running and escaping from a mysterious creature, only for the tables to turn; she may be the beast after all.
“I’m so ready and so incredibly humbled to get to share this project,” Williams said in a statement. “Making it was a scary, empowering experience. Some of my proudest moments as a lyricist happened while writing Petals for Armor. And I was able to get my hands a little dirtier than usual when it came to instrumentation.”
She went on: “I’m in a band with my favorite musicians, so I never really feel the need to step into a role as a player when it comes to Paramore records. This project, however, benefited from a little bit of musical naïveté and rawness and so I experimented quite a bit more. I made this with some of the closest people to me. Their respective talents really shine bright throughout the record. I like to think we all make each other better and the result is something that sounds and feels exactly as I’d hoped it would. Now that it’s time to put it all out there, I can finally exhale. I’m excited to let people in to experience a different side of myself that I’ve only very recently become familiar with.”
Paramore released their last album, After Laughter, in 2017. That album marked the return of original member Zac Farro on drums after the departure of bassist Jeremy Davis. Last year, Williams told ET she’s uncertain of the band’s future plans, noting, “I really don’t know what’s next for Paramore.”
