If there’s going to be a soundtrack to the end of the world, then we could do a lot worse than this: Spitting Off The Edge Of The World by Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

There could not be a better time to make a song about how the world is teetering on the edge of extinction. And this is it: a radiant yet heartbroken meditation on the ecologically broken world we’re leaving to the next generation.

Musically, it’s all about the slow build: gentle intro, intimate vocals, slowly swelling strings building into brass fanfares… a far cry from the band that came to fame at the turn of the millennium with shouty garage punk songs.

The Yeah Yeah Yeahs first caught our attention alongside the Strokes and the White Stripes in the early Noughties, with their debut album Fever To Tell, but would seem to have little in common now with that album, or those bands’ brand of urgent rock.

Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised: it’s more than a decade since the last Yeah Yeah Yeahs album and singer Karen O has made two solo efforts in between, while guitarist Nick Zinner has been involved in all sorts of collaborations, and Brian Chase in the experimental jazz scene.

This is a collaboration too, with the assistance of Perfume Genius – an artist well worth investigating in his own right – and producer Dave Sitek of TV On The Radio, both of whom leave their own imprint on this beautiful song.