Xiu Xiu - Xiu Mutha Fuckin' Xiu: Vol. 1 [Red]

Xiu Xiu turn other people's songs inside out on Xiu Mutha Fuckin' Xiu: Vol. 1, a 2026 covers album on red vinyl with a download card for bonus tracks.

Since 2020, Jamie Stewart and Angela Seo have run a Bandcamp subscription series under the same name, and subscribers voted on which covers made the cut. It joins the band's earlier tribute projects, Nina and Plays the Music of Twin Peaks, though this time the source list sprawls in every direction. Stewart has described the whole thing as a way of saying thank you to the songs.

The reach is wild. Talking Heads' "Psycho Killer" opens the record, Throbbing Gristle's "Hamburger Lady" sits a song away from a Roy Orbison ballad, and Robyn's "Dancing on My Own" lands a few tracks before GloRilla's "Lick or Sum." Coil, This Heat, Soft Cell, Daniel Johnston and The Runaways all get the same unnerving, intimate treatment.

Stewart and Seo produced it themselves between studios in Los Angeles and Berlin, with guitarist Mary Halvorson, saxophonists Tim Berne and Tony Malaby and drummer Ches Smith adding grit and color around the band's synths and drum machines.

The result works as a primer on the band's dark allure and as a map of their influences, funny and menacing by turns, and stranger than the originals.