It’s been three months since Lorely Rodriguez dropped her ambitious 2018 opus Us, but the album hasn’t left our rotation since last fall. Today, the singer-producer better known as Empress Of is sharing a new version of one of the album’s most powerful tracks, “When I’m With Him,” and it features friend and collaborator Perfume Genius. The pair reimagines “When I’m With Him” as a tender, lurching pop ballad, and it even finds Perfume Genius singing in Spanish to preserve the song’s original bilingual lyrics. The video for “When I’m With Him” was a love letter to Rodriguez’s East LA roots, capturing backyard hangouts and the city’s vibrant POC art scenes, so Perfume Genius’ choice to honor the bilingual aspect is especially fitting. He infuses the song with a new sense of sentimentality and introspection, adding even more layers to this devastating portrait of a romantic relationship in limbo.
Stream it below: