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Sturgill Simpson Releases A New Song For Zombie Comedy 'The Dead Don't Die'

Sturgill Simpson.
Reto Sterchi
/
Courtesy of the artist
Sturgill Simpson.

Jim Jarmusch's new zombie comedy The Dead Don't Die features a Murderer's Row of oddball celebrities, including Bill Murray, Adam Driver, Tilda Swinton, Tom Waits, Chloë Sevigny, Selena Gomez, RZA, Iggy Pop, Rosie Perez, Carol Kane, Steve Buscemi, Danny Glover... and Sturgill Simpson, whose spaced-out country music has made him a cult sensation and Grammy winner.

The movie itself comes out Friday, so to spread the word, Simpson has just dropped the woozily old-school title song from The Dead Don't Die's soundtrack.

It's his first new track since 2016's decorated A Sailor's Guide to Earth in 2016, and it plays over The Dead Don't Die's opening credits (seen below), setting the tone for the film's mix of lunacy, evisceration and dread.

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Stephen Thompson is a writer, editor and reviewer for NPR Music, where he speaks into any microphone that will have him and appears as a frequent panelist on All Songs Considered. Since 2010, Thompson has been a fixture on the NPR roundtable podcast Pop Culture Happy Hour, which he created and developed with NPR correspondent Linda Holmes. In 2008, he and Bob Boilen created the NPR Music video series Tiny Desk Concerts, in which musicians perform at Boilen's desk. (To be more specific, Thompson had the idea, which took seconds, while Boilen created the series, which took years. Thompson will insist upon equal billing until the day he dies.)