Radiohead release “I Promise”, a 1996 song from the vaults

Radiohead have released “I Promise”, a studio recording from the OK Computer period. Steve Lamacq gave it its first play on BBC Radio 6 Music at midnight on the night of 1 to 2 June, and told listeners that someone close to the band had passed on how they were especially apparently pleased to find this in the vaults because they thought it had been lost somewhere over the years⁵. It went to streaming services the same night, and fans who had pre-ordered the reissue through W.A.S.T.E., the band's web shop, got a download.

The recording is acoustic, a strummed guitar with strings rising under Thom Yorke's falsetto. The band played the song on their 1996 tours, from the Fillmore in San Francisco in March into the summer, when they were supporting Alanis Morissette. Rolling Stone has put up footage of it from the Great Woods Center in Mansfield, Massachusetts, that August.

OK Computer OKNOTOK 1997 2017, announced in May, is due on XL Recordings on 23 June. It has the original album and eight B-sides, remastered from the analogue tapes, and three recordings never released before, “I Promise”, “Lift” and “Man of War”. The other two are still to come.

The video went up on the band's website and YouTube channel on 2 June. Its director, Michal Marczak, is the Polish film-maker who made the “Identikit” video. The video follows lone passengers on a night bus through Warsaw, and one of them is a man with a robot's head.