The dusty desert drawl of Howe Gelb, matched to the twang of guitars and the shuffle of drums, is one of my favourite sounds.

His parched tones, whether with or without his band Giant Sand, immediately evoke images of those trident-shaped cacti around his dusty desert hometown of Tucson, Arizona.

Now he’s teamed up with another of America’s great underrated singer-songwriters, master of melancholia M.Ward, and an Irish multi-instrumentalist called McKowski.

The trio have joined forces in a project called Geckøs. And this song, accompanied by a mesmerising video by Kiki Ohara, is the first glimpse into their cross-cultural soundscape.

Dance of the Gecko blends the sun-bleached textures of Southwestern folk with ghostly echoes from across the Atlantic, conjuring a dusty, dreamlike landscape where layered guitars sway like mirages, restrained percussion taps out an ancient rhythm, and voices drift in and out like desert winds.

Recorded in Tucson, with additional recording in Ireland, the collaboration is apparently the result of a lucky accident when the three musicians found themselves in the same room and, as McKowski puts it, “Something caught fire.”

Recently released, it presages a deep dive into Gelb’s songwriting with the release of a new collection, Sandworms: The Songs of Howe Gelb and Giant Sand, featuring a new generation of artists reimagining his songs.

They pay tribute to Gelb’s gifts as a natural storyteller, and his esoteric musical journey, imbuing his tales of happenstance with an enduring sense of wonder and an ever evolving range of styles from alt-country to jazz, lo-fi experiments and beyond.