Hear the first track from Wisconsin indie-rock hero Bon Iver’s ‘reset and reintroduction’

“A reset and reintroduction” is how Bon Iver representatives summed up Wisconsin indie-rock hero Justin Vernon’s first new music in five years under his longtime songwriter moniker.

Titled “SABLE,” — the uppercase letters and comma are officially part of the name — the new EP was announced over the weekend with the release of one of its three tracks, the raw acoustic tune “S P E Y S I D E.” Yes, the spaces are also part of that title.

The EP will be released on Oct. 18 via Bon Iver’s longtime label Jagjaguwar. Preorders of digital physical copies are now available via boniver.org along with related merch, including T-shirts and a camouflage ballcap.

As the new song indicates, “SABLE,” is reportedly a stripped-down collection in the vein of the first Bon Iver album, 2007′s “For Emma, Forever Ago,” which Eau Claire native Vernon famously recorded while holed up at his dad’s hunting cabin in western Wisconsin. “Stripping the project down to the primary elements on which it was originally founded,” reads the press release for the new EP, which was recorded at Vernon’s April Base Studio near Eau Claire and “conceived in places like Key West and the Isles of Minneapolis.”

Aside from a few assorted gigs — including Duluth’s Water Is Life fundraiser in 2021 and a Kamala Harris-Tim Walz campaign rally last month in Eau Claire — Vernon has largely kept Bon Iver on the back burner since the tour for 2019′s “i,i,” which earned an album of the year nomination at the Grammys.