What happens when you cross the dance-pop princess of the moment with the queen of the chamber-pop scene? The former (Caroline Polachek) and the latter (Natalie Mering, aka Weyes Blood) gave listeners the answer we didn’t know we needed on February 7 with the blissed-out single “Butterfly Net.”

Both artists can safely say they had a good 2023. Polachek released Desire, I Want to Turn Into You, the anticipated follow-up to her 2019 solo debut Pang. Mering hit the road in support of 2022’s And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow, an orchestral-folk exploration that is also her most critically acclaimed record to date. (This reviewer serendipitously caught Weyes Blood’s second Berlin show in November, and Polachek tops the to-be-seen list.) The possibilities for their next moves seemed limitless.

Much as fans may have speculated, it’s unlikely that anyone predicted a collaboration—and yet, in hindsight, the pairing makes sense. While Polachek tends toward synth-speckled ‘80s homages (“So Hot You’re Hurting My Feelings,” “Welcome to My Island”) and Mering toward introspective, drone-sustained ballads (“Movies”) or McCartney-esque tunes and tempos (“Everyday,” “Children of the Empire”), there’s a dreamy suspension about both their catalogues that makes for a compelling match. As they suggest in the chorus’s closing lyrics, it’s as if they’re trying to catch light with their voices.

Those voices, though individually unmistakable, fit together as easily as puzzle pieces. Over five and a half minutes, undergirded by steadily ebbing and flowing instrumentals, they intertwine and separate with equal fluidity. The intervals between them range from warm thirds to cleanly hollowed-out fifths. The production techniques that amplify their already ethereal sound seem to be transliterating the objects in the text: mirrors that reflect and project, butterfly nets that swipe without much hope of catching. Subtle shifts between major and minor scales accentuate the untethered mood, creating a sense that the tonal home is a tenuous one. But it’s a comfortable, even mesmerizing, discomfort.

Polachek is the primary artist—the single was released under her name—and, as such, her trademarks are audible. Arpeggiated chords abound, as do unconventional touches, in this case the periodic chime of a bell. She’s shown a penchant for long, undulating outros, usually a B or C section in the song’s structure, as on 2022’s “Billions.” This time, we are borne toward the end of the song on the crest of a non-syllabic, highly syncopated vocal pattern that appears to combine the choral postlude sensibility of “Billions” with the percussive bursts of Polachek’s second-most-recent single, “Dang.”

That number, in addition to this one, demonstrates the expansion and risk that she’s already undertaking with only two full-length records under her belt. But her ethos remains the same. Like most of her work as a lone artist, “Butterfly Net” is meant to evoke an atmosphere above all else, meant for listeners to lose themselves inside. Here’s hoping we can look forward to more getting lost in Polachek’s chiaroscuro world, with guideposts like Weyes Blood to light the way.