A smokey jangle radiates from Alana Springsteen’s new song “ghost in my guitar.” With Chris Stapleton lending spooky guitar work, the collaboration burrows itself into the dark parts of life that leave indelible marks on our lives. Those imprints torment us day and night, leaving us emotionally and psychologically drained.

“ghost in my guitar” (co-written with Sarah Solovay, Ido Zmishlany, and Delacey Amaradio) rattles in the brain. “Goodbye was the best thing you told me / Only time that I ever heard the truth,” she confesses. “Even now I’m haunted by the whole thing / Can’t believe I believed in you.”

The drums kick in, giving the song a throbbing heartbeat. She continues unfurling her heartstrings and lets them pool at her feet. “Tugging all the strings inside my heart / And when I try to write you out, I write you down,” she sings in the chorus. “It’s pouring out again / I hear it in my head and there you are / Bringing back the best and the worst parts.

Listen to “ghost in my guitar” below.

On Instagram, Springsteen shared that the song depicts all “the things that haunt us – people whose memory we can’t seem to shake no matter how hard we try. This duet needed to allude to the person who once was, which is why it couldn’t be a vocal,” she says, noting how it’s a duet with Stapleton’s guitar. “I had this insanely specific tone in my head for it and ended up seeing Chris play his fender jazzmaster live for the first time right around the time I was cutting this song.”

“I knew immediately that it had to be him. There was never a backup plan if he said no,” she adds. “Thankfully, Chris is the kind of artist and musician who believes in the integrity of a song over anything else, and I’m forever grateful that he liked this one enough to lend his iconic talent to it.”

“ghost in my guitar” bookends Springsteen’s just-released new project, TWENTY SOMETHING: Figuring It Out.