Hayley Williams – "Leave It Alone"

Paramore’s Hayley Williams released “Simmer,” the lead single from her debut solo album Petals For Armor, a week ago today. She’s already back with the album’s second single, “Leave It Alone.” In contrast to its intense, rhythmically charged predecessor, this one’s looser and warmer while maintaining the project’s dark vibe.

Here’s what she said about the new song on Beats 1 today:

It really sucks that you do have to dig through the dirtiest shit to find like the diamonds or something, you know? Like you’ve got to burn all it f. My family went through something insane in the middle … I’m working. I’m doing all this work on childhood stuff and traumas, and I’m terrified losing people obviously. And my Nana, who was my mom’s mother, had this terrible fall. And it was right after, it was the day after… Her and I share a birthday. She’s 50 years older than me, so she’s 81 now. The day after her 80th, my 30th, she fell like all the way down my mom’s stairs and suffered] head trauma. Like the kind thing that we had said goodbye to her. Right? And in a weird twisted… The weirdest thing is that she got better, but it prolonged the grief because she’s not really here with us. She doesn’t really remember everything. Thankfully she knows who I am, she knows who my mom is, but she really doesn’t. It was so tough and felt like there was a lot death at the time. People that we knew, a lot disease, like family friends and stuff. And I just thought, like, what is the point loving people? Like why? Even in the best case scenario is I fall in love, we have a life together and then we lose one or the other. It’s terrifying. The more you love, the more you stand to lose, but it’s like the more I let it… I mean, I struggle with it all the time.

Like “Simmer,” “Leave It Alone” was produced by Paramore’s Taylor York and co-written by Joey Howard. And like “Simmer,” it arrives with a video directed by Warren Fu with creative direction by Lindsey Byrnes. This one finds Williams maybe emerging from a chrysalis in one storyline while roaming the woods in flowing druid attire in another. Watch below.

Petals For Armor is out 5/8 on Atlantic.