Alt rock veterans Pixies have released a new EP, EP 2.

Limited to 4,000 copies on 10″ vinyl and available digitally now, it’s lead by the track ‘Blue Eyed Hexe’, which can be streamed above. For more details, head to the Pixies website.

The group haven’t released a studio album since 1991, but released their first new EP in over two decades last September.

Update: In a press release sent out by the band’s PR, the group describe the songs on EP 2. ‘Blue Eyed Hexe’ is, according to Black Francis, “a tale from the northwestern part of the UK, and it’s a witch-woman kind of a song. That’s what a ‘hexe’ is, and ours is a blue-eyed hexe.” ‘Madalena’, in Joey Santiago’s words, “is so atmospheric … We had these weird Moog pedals that sounded like water. It was a very mood-based, atmospheric sound, not based on any lyrics or anything.”

Perhaps most interesting is Francis’s description of ‘Greens and Blues’ as a successor to Surfer Rosa‘s ‘Gigantic’. “As with all my songs”, he claims, “I would prefer people add their own interpretation to it. But, in this case, let’s just say that we had done ‘Gigantic’ as the closer for many years at our reunion shows and it worked really well. But I could see that we were going to grow weary of that and I felt like we basically needed a better ‘Gigantic.’ It was my attempt to come up with another song that would – musically, emotionally and psychologically – sit in the same place that ‘Gigantic’ has sat. Not that I could ever replace that song: you write songs and they come out the way they come out. So perhaps it can be said that this song fills the emotional niche that ‘Gigantic’ occupied, another show-closer. I think the lyric alludes to that, the fact that it’s the end of the night, the end of something. And a separation if you will, between the band and the audience. So I guess it’s kind of a goodbye song, or really more of a ‘good night’ song.”

Finally, Santiago on ‘Snakes’: “I’m not a jammer, but Black Francis and I started jamming it out. I had this little idea and I did that sliding guitar just to emulate a snake.”