If anyone has cause to celebrate this week, it’s Wolf Alice fans. After waiting four years for a new album from the British rock band, the group announced that its fourth LP, The Clearing, is arriving this summer on Aug. 29.
The news lands alongside lead single “Bloom Baby Bloom,” which vocalist and guitarist Ellie Rowsell has described in a statement as a rejection of “the ‘girl singer in band’ trope” that she has been made subject to in the past. “I wanted a rock song, to focus on the performance element of a rock song and sing like Axl Rose, but to be singing a song about being a woman,” she shared in a press release. “I’ve used the guitar as a shield in the past … but I wanted to focus on my voice as a rock instrument so it’s been freeing to put the guitar down and reach a point where I don’t feel like I need to prove that I’m a musician.”
The accompanying video for “Bloom Baby Bloom,” meanwhile, was made in collaboration with director Colin Solal Cardo, renowned for his work with Charli xcx, Robyn and Phoenix. It sees Rowsell perform alongside a troupe of dancers, with choreography from Ryan Heffington, the visionary behind Sia’s iconic “Chandelier” video.
The Clearing will be released via Wolf Alice’s new label home of Sony Music, whom the band signed with last year after completing a three-album contract with Dirty Hit (The 1975, Beabadoobee). The forthcoming record was written in Seven Sisters, north London, and recorded in Los Angeles with the Grammy-winning producer Greg Kurstin in late 2024.
A tracklist for the album is yet to be announced, but the band has shared its artwork, which features Rowsell singing into a vintage microphone while wearing an olive-green leotard and knee-high leather boots.
Comprised of Rowsell, guitarist Joff Oddie, bassist Theo Ellis and drummer Joel Amey, the four-piece will prepare for the arrival of the new LP with a series of U.K. and Irish shows in the coming weeks. The band is scheduled to perform intimate theater gigs in Kilkenny, Cork and Limerick May 19-21, ahead of appearances at Radio 1’s Big Weekend in Liverpool (May 24) and Glastonbury on June 28.
Blue Weekend, the band’s last full-length effort, arrived in 2021 and topped the Official U.K. Albums Chart before leading the group to its first-ever BRIT award the following year. It was also nominated for the Mercury Prize, which Wolf Alice won for 2017’s Visions of a Life.
