Alien Observer

Alien Observer is built from two things, as NPR put it: a Wurlitzer electric organ, whose motor you can hear humming, and Harris's voice, layered into harmonies. Unlike most of the album there is no drone, just the keyboard's wavering line. Its lyric pictures someone apart from everyone, heading out among the stars; NPR called it a song about isolation, and Pitchfork later heard the title track as almost liturgical. Pitchfork premiered it in March 2011 as the album's lead track, and Hamish Parkinson directed an official video of creatures rising from leaf mulch.

It is by far her most performed song: setlist.fm logs more than forty shows, starting in December 2008 at the Knitting Factory in New York, more than two years before the record came out, and it was in every set of the 2026 tour. The hypersongs web holds two uploads of the same 2011 studio recording: the official audio, and a fan video that sets it to footage from Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life.