Widely regarded as one of the foremost songwriters of her generation or any other, Suzanne Vega is sharing a new single, “Rats,” and a music video directed by acclaimed animator and filmmaker Martha Colburn. Stream/share the video HERE and stream the track HERE.

“Rats”—a meditation on the rats of New York City—comes ahead of NYC’s Urban Rat Summit which kicks off tomorrow. “Rats” was written by Vega with music and production by her long time guitarist and musical director, Gerry Leonard.

Of the track, which hails from sessions for a forthcoming album, Vega notes, “I was talking to Jimmy Hogarth, the producer of my 2007 album Beauty and Crime. We were discussing who had seen the biggest rat. After that conversation, I kept reading about or hearing various rat stories, all of them true. I took careful note and set it all to music, inspired by The Ramones and Fontaines D.C.”

Video director Colburn blends surreal stop-motion with distinctive collage elements. Her films are held in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.

Vega kicks off the next leg of her Old Songs, New Songs and Other Songs tour with a performance at the Bourbon & Beyond Festival in Louisville, KY on September 19, with dates running throughout the fall. See below for a list of dates; tickets for all upcoming shows are available for purchase at suzannevega.com/tour.

The 2024 tour follows a busy year of touring in 2023 that saw Vega perform extensively in the US and Europe. Her remaining 2024 dates will treat audiences to a career spanning evening that will include a first listen to several songs from her forthcoming album.

Photo credit Ebru Yildiz

Of Vega’s performances The New York Times notes that she “is attentive to the realm of the unseen.” Finding Connecticut lauded a recent concert as “nothing short of mesmerizing, weaving tales through her soulful songs in a cozy setting that allowed for a deep connection with the audience.”

Vega emerged as a leading figure of the folk-music revival of the early 1980s. Since the release of her self-titled, critically acclaimed 1985 debut album, she has written and recorded numerous songs that have become part of the contemporary music vernacular, including “Luka,” “Marlene on the Wall” and “Tom’s Diner,” an a cappella piece that was remixed by U.K. electronic dance duo DNA and became a major club hit. It remains an oft-sampled and covered standard by artists across the musical spectrum. Her albums, including her self-titled debut, follow-up Solitude Standing and 99.9F have sold millions of copies worldwide.

Vega’s most recent release, the career-spanning album An Evening of New York Songs and Stories (Amanuensis/Cooking Vinyl) was hailed by the Associated Press as “an excellent Vega primer, an artist who still merits being on your radar no matter what your hometown may be,” while Stereogum raves that the album is “a stripped-down, intimate tour through her songbook, highlighting her rich voice and novelistic approach to lyrics.”