Franz Ferdinand have shared a second brand new track, ‘Curious’, from their forthcoming greatest hits album, ‘Hits To The Head’.

READ MORE: Franz Ferdinand talk new single ‘Billy Goodbye’, their greatest hits and new line-up

After teasing their return back in early November, the Scottish indie veterans released ‘Billy Goodbye’, their first new track in three years – a raucous glam stomper that the band worked on with Stuart Price (Dua Lipa, Madonna, Pet Shop Boys).

The only other new track on ‘Hits To The Head’ is ‘Curious’, which frontman Alex Kapranos called “quite a different-sounding song” when speaking to NME in a recent interview.

“Sonically, it’s more at the silky dance floor end of what the band is about,” he explained. “That one’s about imagining yourself in a situation at the beginning of a romantic relationship, being part of the magical moments and suddenly being overwhelmed by the sense of what’s to come and wondering how you will be when repetition, routine and the everyday is what your relationship becomes.

“Are you still going to love me when the magic has faded?”

The track comes alongside a video that sees the band put on their dancing shoes. “So, it’s a dance song we said later on when thinking about a video. And we’ve always said we play dance music said Bob, so why don’t we dance in the video?” Kapranos said of the accompanying clip. “So we gave Andy Knowles, our old pal who was in Bob’s class at Art School and played with FF in 2005/6, a shout and he was up for it. You can spot his cameo and, yes, that is us actually dancing.”

You can check out the video for ‘Curious’ below:

Franz Ferdinand will release ‘Hits To The Head’ on March 11, 2022, via Domino Records.

Speaking to NME about the release and greatest hits as a whole, Kapranos said: “There’s quite a lot of snobbery about greatest hits. People always refer to the Alan Partridge joke, ‘Oh yeah, what’s the best Beatles album? ‘The Red Album’ – but I love greatest hits records!’

“You know, again when I was a kid I grew up with greatest hits records. My folks didn’t have a 4,000 LP record collection. They had best-ofs, they had greatest hits, they had ‘Changes’ by Bowie. They didn’t have ‘Low’, they didn’t have ‘Lodger’ – and that was enough for them. They just wanted to hear the best bits, they just wanted to hear the hits. That’s great.

“If that’s all they wanted to hear, if that’s all these needed to hear from those artists then fuck it – you enjoy that! But also, those records were something else. That’s what it was for them, but for me it was an introduction: it was that doorway that I could step through into the world of those artists.”

You can see the tracklist for ‘Hits To The Head’ below:

1. ‘Darts Of Pleasure’           
2. ‘Take Me Out’                               
3. ‘The Dark Of The Matinée’      
4. ‘Michael’                                         
5. ‘This Fire’                                        
6. ‘Do You Want To’                         
7. ‘Walk Away’                                  
8. ‘The Fallen’                                    
9. ‘Outsiders’                                    
10. ‘Lucid Dreams’                              
11. ‘Ulysses’                                          
12. ‘No You Girls’                                
13. ‘Right Action’                                
14. ‘Evil Eye’                                          
15. ‘Love Illumination’                       
16. ‘Stand On The Horizon’             
17. ‘Always Ascending’                     
18. ‘Glimpse Of Love’                        
19. ‘Curious’       
20. ‘Billy Goodbye’     

Franz Ferdinand will head out on a UK and European tour in support of the record in March.

Kicking off in Barcelona on March 15, the run of dates also includes shows in London, Manchester, Glasgow, Madrid, Lisbon, Bilbao, Munich, Milan and Rennes. You can see the full schedule here.

The post Franz Ferdinand fast forward love on brand new single, ‘Curious’ appeared first on NME.