Sleater-Kinney releases comeback single, unveils tour dates

This week Sub Pop will release “Start Together,” a career-spanning vinyl box set that takes a look back at one of America’s premiere punk rock bands of the last 20 years, Sleater-Kinney. But while the Pacific Northwest trio may have entered the phase of its career where it’s worthy of receiving the retrospective treatment, don’t confine the band to the nostalgia bin yet.

This morning Sleater-Kinney confirmed rumors that began circulating on Friday. The all-female group, which split in 2006 but not before defining the riot grrrl movement and providing an alternative to the male-dominated grunge scene, is back together. A new album, “No Cities to Love,” will be released by Sub Pop on Jan. 20 with a tour to follow.

A single, “Bury Our Friends,” was unveiled today and is posted above.

“Exhume our idols, bury our friends,” sings Corin Tucker in the chorus, snapping at the words with all the panicked tension of someone who’s digging up old bones but ready to take a shovel to new ones. Carrie Brownstein’s guitar is, as always, a lead instrument and a rhythmic one, aggressively pushing the song forward one moment and then dismantling it the next, while drummer Janet Weiss is ultimately leading the conversation.

And what a welcome conversation it is. There’s every indication in “Bury Our Friends” that Sleater-Kinney isn’t shying away from the social commentary that made its albums throughout the late ‘90s and early 2000s vital listening. “Make me a headline,” the band sings in a late-song breakdown, where the drumming gets soft, the guitars get trippy, and messages of narcissism and exhaustion get all mixed up.

“We sound possessed on these songs, willing it all -- the entire weight of the band and what it means to us -- back into existence,” Brownstein said in a statement.

If there’s bad news, at least for local readers, it’s that among Sleater-Kinney’s 20 initial tour dates announced, there is no Los Angeles stop -- yet. Brownstein on Twitter assured fans that more stops would be unveiled soon. Fingers crossed, however, that we see the band first in its natural habitat -- a club -- rather than the outdoor grounds of a spring or summer music festival.

Sleater-Kinney’s tour starts Feb. 8, in Spokane, Wash., and takes the band to Chicago, New York, London, Dublin and more. The initial round of dates wrap on March 26.

Twitter: @toddmartens