Nelly Furtado surprises fans with new track

Nelly Furtado has surprised her fans by releasing a new track.

The Canadian star has been busy working on the follow-up to her 2012 album, The Spirit Indestructible, but spared some time away from the studio to share a new song.

Nelly released Feel So Close exclusively on Spotify on Monday (06Jun16), which is a stripped-down take on Calvin Harris' dance anthem of the same name.

"I originally did a live version of this Calvin Harris cover at a radio station in 2012 which was posted on YouTube," the Promiscuous singer explained in a statement on Facebook.

"I decided recently to record my own version in the studio and post it exclusively on Spotify so that music fans can enjoy streaming it."

Nelly, 37, added she chose music streaming service Spotify to promote her music as she sees them as very "artist-friendly" and believes the company compensates musicians well for their art. Taylor Swift famously pulled her music from the streaming site as she felt artists were not adequately compensated. Spotify revealed it pays 70 per cent of its revenue to labels - about $1 billion in 2014 - and artists or rights holders are paid between $0.006 and $0.0084 per stream.

The Maneater singer added that the tune has a rather romantic vibe and that she knows of couples who have used it for their first dance song at weddings. But the Grammy Award-winner, who first found fame with her debut album Whoa, Nelly! back in 2000, did not give any further details as to when she may release more music.

Nelly has been tinkering away at album number six for a while now, hitting the recording studio with British producer Duke Dumont in late 2014.

"An interesting one at the moment - we’re doing some stuff in the very early stages - is Nelly Furtado. I love her," he said, according to Digital Spy. "With Nelly Furtado, you could write a hit record that would actually be good."

He continued: "There’s not many artists like that in the pop music world. With other singers, it would be a more generic track. With Nelly Furtado, I think you could actually do something quite interesting."