Photo: Ingrid Renan

Y La Bamba doesn’t need help to make a charming, haunting jewel of a song, but when it comes in the form of Neko Case, it sure doesn’t hurt.

“Court the Storm,” the title track off the Portland, Ore. Band’s second full-length, employs Case’s trademark howl to great effect, allowing it to float above the group’s trademark art-folk sound. It’s no accident that the two go so well together.“I wrote the song right around the time we found out we were going on tour with her, so I wrote certain parts with her in mind,” says Luzelena Mendoza, the band’s main songwriter. “I wrote this one with bravery—intoxicated by romance and its tribulations.” Intoxicated sounds just about right. The song swirls and dips for more than five minutes, and when it ends, you’re left a bit breathless and lonely; romance and its tribulations made perfectly clear.

Court the Storm arrives February 28 on Tender Loving Empire.