English singer-songwriter FKA twigs recently announced her upcoming third studio album with the release of its title track, “Eusexua,” on Sept. 13. Five years after her last album “MAGDALENE,” the artist released the single with an accompanying music video, showcasing the evolution of the unique artistry and otherworldly creative vision that she has long been known for amongst fans. The album of the same name is set to release on Jan. 24 next year.
In a post on X officially announcing the arrival of her new album, FKA twigs shared, “EUSEXUA has been my practice for the years that it has been in creation. it is my opus and truly feels like a pin at the centre of the core of my artist.”
This grand sentiment reveals itself within the first few seconds of “Eusexua,” a single that seems to encapsulate the genre-bending, eccentric nature of the singer’s musical persona. Amid the pulsing opening beat, FKA twigs gently pierces the din of a European techno club located in a distant cosmos. Captivating listeners with eerie, twinkling instrumentals that continue to push the song forward, twigs simultaneously grounds and hypnotizes her listeners with whispery, staccato vocals.
FKA twigs coins the term “Eusexua” as a sensual, heightened state of euphoria, a way of feeling and experiencing the world that she is constantly craving herself. Indeed, a dark dystopian screen at the end of the single’s music video lists “Eusexua” as a “practice … a state of being … the pinnacle of human experience.”
This vagueness behind the single’s namesake only adds to the mystique behind twigs’s delivery of lyrics in the song. In an airy voice, she uncovers, layer by layer, the buried secrets of the universe, enticing her listeners to indulge in the all-encompassing, fluid existence from which she derives artistic inspiration. “And if they ask you, say you feel it / But don’t call it love, eusexua,” she sings. In this, FKA twigs sheds traditional forms of love and searches for a larger, more universal form of self-assurance that comes from within — rather than from the affection of another individual.
The emphasis on independence and inner peace lingers as the song gradually comes to a close, with the pulsing instrumentals slowly fading to static and FKA twigs’s voice filling the empty space: “I was on the edge of something greater than before / But nobody told me / Eusexua.” On the verge of entering a new personal era of well-being and raw individuality, FKA twigs brings such emotions to her professional craft with the introduction of “Eusexua,” both as a song and as a spiritual concept.
Isabel Hahn is an Arts & Culture section editor who concentrates in English and Behavioral Decision Sciences. In her free time, she enjoys watching movies, reading, and journaling.
