Photo: Annabel Mehran

The Dirty Three have been busy of late backing some of indie rock’s most distressed songwriters like Nick Cave and PJ Harvey, but guitarist Mick Turner, drummer Jim White and violinist Warren Ellis still find time to get the old chamber group back together when Cave decides he needs some alone time.

Later this month, the return with Toward the Low Sun, their first batch of songs in seven years. The first single,  “Rising Below,” opens with a lazy strut that wouldn’t sound out of place on a rare Stax 45, with a restrained Ellis’ providing ambient color. Like most of the D3′s best work, the piece builds over the course of it’s five minutes, with a rising action that finds White deploying an arc of fills that hit with a precision and force worthy of Gene Krupa, while Ellis slowly graduates from imitating a musical saw to sounding like he’s hacking down a forest with his bow. Dirty as ever, but not rust on these three.

Toward the Low Sun arrives February 28 via Drag City.