The Smile release “Skrting on the Surface”, with Yorke down a tin mine

The Smile released “Skrting on the Surface” on XL Recordings on 17 March, their third single after “You Will Never Work in Television Again” and “The Smoke”.

The song is older than the band. Thom Yorke played it, then spelt “Skirting on the Surface”, alone at a piano at the Echoplex in Los Angeles on 2 October 2009, the first show by the group that became Atoms for Peace, and again at the Orpheum three nights later. Radiohead played it for the first time in the encore at the American Airlines Center in Dallas on 5 March 2012, on The King of Limbs tour, then in Austin the next night and in Mexico City in April, and never put it on a record.

The band have played the song since their first show, the Live at Worthy Farm livestream from Glastonbury last May. Ryan Reed of Ultimate Classic Rock puts the recording in 11/8, with Jonny Greenwood's fingerpicked electric guitar run through heavy delay and Yorke in falsetto. At points the rhythm section drops out and leaves the guitar alone with a muted woodwind part. Guitar.com expects all three singles to be on The Smile's first album, which Nigel Godrich has produced and whose title and release date have not been announced.

The video is by Mark Jenkin, the BAFTA-winning writer and director, shot in black and white on 16mm film deep in the disused Rosevale Tin Mine in Cornwall and developed by hand in water from the mine. Yorke is the miner. He pushes a cart through narrow tunnels until he stops, tips out his load and starts to fill in a passage.