Billie Eilish Covers A Strokes Song About How Phones Are The Worst

Last month, Dua Lipa surprised with a unexpected, slow-motion cover of Arctic Monkeys' "Do I Wanna Know?" that showcased once again how good big, brawny rock songs can sound any time approached from another angle. Right now, 16-year-old pop whiz kid Billie Eilish has made a similar play, this time with "Call Me Back," a blue cut from The Strokes' 2011 LP, Angles.


Playing as piece of The Tonight Show's web-only Cover Room series, Eilish makes the molasses-paced Strokes song, an outlier on an album packed with varying moods and tempos, feel like her own. There's an ache in Eilish's voice that makes the loneliness of singing the lyrics "I hold your phone, don't wake up / I hear a voice in the ground" especially present.


Eilish's EP Don't Smile At Me was released last summer, and just last week, she put out the new, electronic-tinged single "Bitches Damaged Hearts," which sounds like it may sit side-by-side with her Strokes cover on a release, maybe if it was arranged just a little bit differently. Or perhaps you can would make your own playlist and sequence it that way.


She also performed her own song "Bellyache" on The Tonight Show a couple of weeks back. Check that out below, immediately after you fall all of the way into her crystalline acoustic "Call Me Back" cover above.