Michael Ray has returned with his first piece of new music since his 2021 Higher Education EP — a brand new song called "Get Her Back."

The song — the first offering from his new Dive Bars & Broken Hearts EP — finds Ray singing on the backside of a relationship, and while he initially hopes to make amends, his goal soon turns to retribution.

Although Ray didn't have a hand in writing this one — it was penned by Dallas Wilson, Jordan James, Lalo and Michael Tyler — he cites the song's unique change of direction as his reason for recording it.

"I was raised on country songs that turn what you think on its head,” Ray says in a press release. “You think you know what the song’s all about — then you hear the hook and it’s something completely else."

"Get Her Back" begins like any country heartbreak song, as Ray sings of seeing his ex around town and wishing he could make their relationship right. However, that feeling soon turns into the desire for revenge as he discovers perceived wrongdoings by his former love.

"Now, I just wanna get her back / For everything that she did behind closed doors / All the lies and the signs that I ignored / ‘Cause I swore that I loved her, but now that it’s over / I just wanna get her back," he sings in the chorus.

Its accompanying music video tells the story of love gone wrong and ends in a tragic accident. Directed by Spidey Smith, the clip opens with EMS workers loading a stretcher onto an ambulance and Ray being questioned by authorities. Scenes of the interrogation and a police search inside a home are paired with flashbacks of the singer in a happy relationship with a woman.

The two have wine nights and attend swanky events, but trouble soon befalls their love. After a fight, the woman makes a wine-fueled call to her ex and suffers a tragic mishap.

"[Smith] understands that place where you want to snap, but then you settle down and you just move on," Ray says of the video. "To be able to find a way of showing how far you can stand from the fire and still get burned, how you can do the right thing, which sometimes is nothing, and just keep moving? It’s a tough line to walk, but he did."

Ray's six-song Dive Bars & Broken Hearts EP will drop June 23. The singer has been teasing this batch of new music for some time, hinting to Taste of Country last year that the project will tell his side of personal topics. He and fellow country singer Carly Pearce divorced in 2020.

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