This Friday, Fontaines D.C. will release their highly anticipated fourth album Romance. The Irish band have shown a sonic range with the singles “Starburster,” “Favourite,” and “Here’s The Thing,” and today they’re offering one final preview with the slow-burner “In The Modern World.”

On the first song from Fontaines D.C.’s debut album Dogrel, Grian Chatten proclaimed: “My childhood was small/ But I’m gonna be big.” It was a self-fulfilling prophecy. That 2019 record from the Dublin band — who’ve since relocated to London — instantly set them apart from the slew of other groups overpopulating the post-punk genre. That year, we named them a Band To Watch; the year after, they unveiled its follow-up, A Hero’s Death, which was honored as our Album Of The Week. Their third LP, Skinty Fia, was predictably extraordinary as well, but now, with Romance, Fontaines D.C. leveled up in ways that couldn’t have been expected.

Fontaines D.C. have a new album called Romance arriving later this month. The Irish post-punks have shared a few singles from it, including “Starburster,” “Favourite” (which you voted as one of 2024’s Songs Of The Summer), and “Here’s The Thing” (which we named one of the Best Songs Of The Week). Safe to say there’s a lot of excitement surrounding this new record.

Every week the Stereogum staff chooses the five best new songs of the week. The eligibility period begins and ends Thursdays right before midnight. You can hear this week’s picks below and on Stereogum’s Favorite New Music Spotify playlist, which is updated weekly. (An expanded playlist of our new music picks is available to members on Spotify and Apple Music, updated throughout the week.)

If you’re like me, the phrase “here’s the thing” sparks the involuntary response, “we started out friends.” But 20 years after “Since U Been Gone,” Fontaines D.C. have emerged with a competitor for that patch of mental real estate. “Here’s The Thing,” the latest single from Fontaines’ upcoming Romance following “Starburster” and “Favourite,” continues the album’s weird ’90s pivot. It’s a crunchy, grungy rock tune with a chorus that could almost pass for Weezer. This band continues to evolve in seriously intriguing ways.

In 1976, Peter Perrett founded the Only Ones, the band most famous for the 1978 power pop classic “Another Girl, Another Planet.” The Only Ones have broken up and reunited a few times over the years, and Perrett has launched a couple of other bands. Perrett also started a late-in-life solo career, releasing his solo debut How The West Was Won in 2017 and following it with 2019’s Humanworld. Now, Perrett’s got a new album on the way, and it features some prominent collaborators.

You, the people, have done your civic duty. The votes are in, and we can now announce the results of our annual Song Of The Summer poll.

Earlier this year, Fontaines D.C. announced their new album Romance and released the striking lead single “Starburster” with a music video that featured an unexpected cameo from pop singer Jade. On Friday, Grian Chatten returned the favor with an appearance in the Little Mix member’s video for “Angel Of My Dreams.”

Glastonbury ’24 commenced earlier this week. So far the massive UK festival has been full of memorable moments: IDLES, Damon Albarn, Gossip, Kneecap, and Aurora all showed support for Palestine; Kevin Parker and Fred again.. both did surprise DJ sets; Voice Of Baceprot became the first Indonesian band to play the fest and SEVENTEEN became the first K-pop group to play; and Marina Abramović led the crowd in seven minutes of silence before PJ Harvey’s set. James covered Dua Lipa for BBC Radio 2. But that’s only a sliver of what went on. Here are some of the surprise onstage collabs that happened, and we’ll update this post as the fest continutes.

In April, Fontaines D.C. announced their new album Romance, the follow-up to 2022’s Skinty Fia, and unleashed the gnarly lead single “Starburster.” Today, the Dublin post-punk crew is releasing the closing track, “Favourite,” which they debuted live in Brooklyn last month.

Last month, Fontaines D.C. announced a new album, Romance, with the excellent lead single “Starburster,” which they performed on The Tonight Show earlier this week. Last night, they did a one-off show at Warsaw in Brooklyn, where they debuted a new Romance song called “Favourite” during the encore. It’s the album’s closing track. Check out video below.

In a few months, Dublin post-punk heroes Fontaines D.C. will release Romance, their first album for new label XL, and it’s got to be one of the most anticipated indie rock releases of the year. The band announced the LP with the synthy, half-rapped single “Starburster.” Last night, they performed that song on Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show, and they looked cool as hell.

Last week, Fontaines D.C. teased a new song with a video of singer Grian Chatten looking quite injured while petting a pig. We assumed a new album from the Irish band was on its way, and we were right. Today, they’ve announced Romance, the follow-up to 2022’s Skinty Fia. Produced by James Ford, it’s their first release for new label home XL. The lead single “Starburster” is out now.

It appears we are on the verge of a new Fontaines D.C. album rollout. The Irish greats hit us with the excellent Skinty Fia in 2022, and now they’re teasing what looks to be a fascinating new music video.

Massive Attack, Fontaines D.C., and Young Fathers have announced the release of a limited-edition Ceasefire EP, with proceeds benefitting Doctors Without Borders’ emergency operations in Gaza and the West Bank. The vinyl is available for pre-order now and includes material from all three groups, with artwork designed by Massive Attack’s 3D.

Two members of Fontaines D.C. are on the new single by Belfast rap group Kneecap. “Better Way To Live,” Kneecap’s debut single for Heavenly Recordings, finds Fontaines singer Grian Chatten, fresh off his latest solo album, doing a sing-rapped hook over hip-hop production so colorfully funky it almost feels like a cartoon. In other words, they’ve made a pretty good Gorillaz song. Fontaines drummer Tom Coll is behind the kit for this one too, and the beat is by Toddla T.

Grian Chatten, lead singer for Fontaines D.C., is set to release a solo debut album Chaos For The Fly, on June 30. Chatten has shared a few singles from the album already, notably “The Score,” “Last Time Every Time Forever,” and “Fairlies,” the latter of which Chatten performed in his solo TV debut on Later… with Jools Holland. Frankly, he killed it — the singer’s backing band sounds tight, and Chatten has a far-away look in his eye while strumming an acoustic guitar, adding a dose of mystery to the proceedings. Watch Chatten and his band perform “Fairlies” below.

Last week, Fontaines D.C. leader Grian Chatten released his debut solo single, “The Score,” and he’s already announced an album to follow, which is called Chaos For The Fly and will be out at the end of June.

Irish post-punk greats Fontaines D.C. are about a year removed from releasing last year’s standout album Skinty Fia. Now, vocalist Grian Chatten has announced his debut solo single, which is called “The Score.” It’s a tense, somber, and stripped-down affair and also comes with a music video directed by Georgie Jesson.

In May, Arlo Parks is releasing a new album, My Soft Machine, the follow-up to her 2021 debut Collapsed In Sunbeams. Over the weekend, Parks performed at the BBC 6 Music Festival in Cardiff and brought out some special guests. The xx’s Romy Madley Croft joined her to duet on “Black Dog,” and Fontaines DC drummer Tom Coll came out to play as a guest on the 2019 track “Sophie.”

Nick Drake is being honored with a new covers tribute album, The Endless Coloured Ways – The Songs Of Nick Drake, which will be out in July. Contributors include Liz Phair, Feist, Philip Selway, Bombay Bicycle Club & The Staves, Let’s Eat Grandma, Ben Harper, John Parish & Aldous Harding, Christian Lee Hutson, Skullcrusher & Gia Margaret, Mike Lindsay & Guy Garvey, John Grant, and more.

The polls have closed, the votes have been counted, and it’s time to reveal the results of our annual readers’ poll the Gummy Awards. It seems y’all still love indie rock very much, with just a pinch of big-budget pop sprinkled throughout. We only included one song per artist, and some reader favorites were excluded due to a split vote. Then again, all of the top tracks were by artists who piled up votes for multiple songs, so better luck next year, Grimace!

Here at Stereogum, one of our fondly held listmas traditions is eschewing a staff-wide countdown of the year’s best songs in favor of personal top 10 playlists of tracks that ruled our past 12 months. Could we flip it around and do personalized album lists while collaborating on a songs list? Sure, but “songs” feels like a broader and much more chaotic pool to narrow down than “albums,” and anyhow, tradition is tradition.

Later this month, the handsome fuckers in the Arctic Monkeys will return with their new album The Car, and they’ve already shared the singles “There’d Better Big A Mirrorball” and “Body Paint.” Last week, the band played their first American shows in four years at LA’s Primavera Sound and Brooklyn’s Kings Theater, and they also hit The Tonight Show. Next year, a whole lot more Americans will get a chance to see the Arctic Monkeys live.

These are lean times for buzz bands, but Dublin post-punkers Fontaines D.C. are making a real run of it. Earlier this year, Fontaines released Skinty Fia, their third album in three years. From all accounts, Fontaines are coming off like stars in their recent festival appearances. Last night, they got another shot to rock out on American TV, and they did well for themselves.

Even as the music industry attempts, sometimes unsuccessfully, to get back to normal, our collective COVID-era time warp hasn’t really resolved itself here in June 2022. In that sense, it feels especially weird and surprising to be running down the best albums of 2022’s first half right now. (Are we sure it’s not still 2021? Are we sure 2020 even happened?) Even more disorienting, any album scheduled to be released by June 30 was eligible for this list, so some of these records are from the future.

If you read anything online about Primavera 2022, you would’ve mostly found disgruntled responses from festivalgoers after the festival’s surprisingly rocky start — the glorious return of Pavement being a big exception. The festival promised to make improvements for the rest of the weekend, and the second day did feel a little better even if basic functional things — again, the lack of access to water outside the slammed bar lines — remain difficult. But, once more, the lineup made up for a lot of that.

Fontaines D.C. just released a new album, Skinty Fia — we reviewed it and had band talk with us about the inspirations behind it. Yesterday, they went on CBS Saturday Morning, and they performed three tracks: one from each of the albums they’ve released since 2019. They did Dogrel‘s “Liberty Belle,” A Hero’s Death‘s “Oh Such A Spring,” and “Jackie Down The Line” off Skinty Fia. Watch below.

In the past week, Dublin post-punk sensations Fontaines D.C. had to cancel a couple of shows because frontman Grian Chatten came down with laryngitis. But even for Dublin post-punk sensations, opportunities to play on American television don’t come along that often. It’s possible that Chatten was still sick when Fontaines taped their musical-guest appearance on Late Night With Seth Meyers, but he didn’t let that stop him.

Under The Influence is a new revival of a very old Stereogum franchise, in which we ask artists to talk about the inspirations behind their albums. From other music, to film, to novels, to stray notes left behind by friends, and who knows what else, this is what’s on people’s minds when they’re writing the songs we eventually come to know and love.

Fontaines D.C.’s new album begins with a quote from a gravestone sung by what sounds like a choir of ghosts. “In ár gCroíthe go deo” — which translates to “In Our Hearts Forever” in Irish — was to be engraved on an Irish woman’s tombstone in London, but her family’s request was initially denied by the governing authorities. “It’s just the heartfelt message, but the Church of England itself ruled that it was … at risk of being perceived as a political slogan,” Grian Chatten told Rolling Stone. “So they refused to allow the Irish language to exist on an Irish person’s gravestone.”

This week, Fontaines D.C. are set to release their latest album, Skinty Fia. We’ve already heard a few album tracks from the Irish post-punkers, including “I Love You,” “Skinty Fia,” and “Jackie Down The Line,” and now we’re getting one more: “Roman Holiday.”

The multidisciplinary artist Kae Tempest has been rolling out their new album The Line Is A Curve for most of this year, and it’s finally out next week. We’ve posted collabs with Kevin Abstract and Lianne La Havas and the solo offering “Salt Coast,” and now the album’s most intriguing feature has been revealed.

Every week the Stereogum staff chooses the five best new songs of the week (the eligibility period begins and ends Thursdays right before midnight). This week’s countdown is below, and you can listen to a playlist of all our 5 Best Songs on Spotify.

Next month, the Irish post-punk band Fontaines D.C. are releasing their third album, Skinty Fia, the follow-up to 2020’s A Hero’s Death. We’ve heard two songs from it so far, “Jackie Down The Line” and “I Love You” and today the band are sharing the album’s shadowy and mumbling title track, which comes attached to a music video directed by Hugh Mulhern.

Everyone’s covering the Cure it seems — in the same week that Chvrches brought out their cover of the Cure’s “Just Like Heaven” with Robert Smith, now Fontaines D.C. are covering “Just Like Heaven” during their livestreamed St. Patrick’s Day set in partnership with Jameson in Dublin.