Eddy director Stéphane Berla, who dropped the emotional Kwoon “King of Sea” music video earlier this year, is back and madly mixing media in this sweeping fantasy for French musician -M- (aka Matthieu Chedid) and former Bowie bassist Gail Ann Dorsey.

Stéphane Berla: “Through my technique, I wished to create a film between stop-motion and 2D animation. While the animation remains fluid and in perpetual metamorphosis, it is also physical and palpable and matches perfectly with the two antagonistic forces at play in the story.

“We follow a little red boy and a little blue girl, evolving on their own. They build their own identity and cultivate their differences only to better find themselves in adulthood and create a common work.

After 24 years, the electronic dance duo returns

“We wanted to come back with something modern-sounding,” explains Tracey Thorn of the first new track from Everything But the Girl in some 24 years. And, while “Nothing Left to Lose” is indebted to a strain of dance music that partly defined 1999’s Temperamental, it feels of the moment, eschewing retro garage-house ebullience for gloomier emotions. It’s also hard to pin down in the midst of U.K. garage’s revitalization; it’s headier than PinkPantheress and the artists following her lead, darker than those in the Shall Not Fade camp, and more pop-minded than U.K. bass acts like Overmono. As always, Everything But the Girl is attuned but inimitable.

Crucial to the duo’s distinct sound are Thorn’s resounding vocals. “What is left to lose,” she asks in the chorus, her tone resolute, as an undulating bass synth and a skipping 2-step beat signal the necessity for urgency in times of worry. For how queasy its electronic wobbling sounds throughout much of the runtime, Thorn overcomes anguish in the bridge — there’s a sensitivity and confidence to her vibrato, which flickers at the end of each phrase. It’s a matter of life and death: “Kiss me while the world decays / Kiss me while the music plays.”