Last year, the Weeknd released After Hours. After Hours is now double platinum, and it was one of the biggest albums of 2020. The LP spun off three #1 hits, including “Blinding Lights,” which broke chart records and which Billboard named the biggest single of 2020. In the past few months, the Weeknd played the Super Bowl Halftime Show and convinced the Grammys to change its rules. He’s producing and starring in his own HBO show. The Weeknd was a star before all this, but he’s at a new peak right now, and his next album is poised to be a very, very big deal. And it appears that we won’t have to wait too long before that next album arrives.

On Twitter last night, the Weeknd wrote, “fuck it … IT STARTS TONIGHT.” He then posted a two-minute preview of a bleary, thumping new track called “Take My Breath”; the teaser is titled “The Dawn Is Coming” on YouTube. The accompanying video shows a sunrise on some psychedelic CGI planet. And just being real here: It sounds pretty fucking awesome. It sounds like Daft Punk remaking the Miami Vice theme music. The clip definitely sounds like an extended intro, and it barely has any of the Weeknd’s vocals, but it promises some very cool things coming.

In a new GQ cover story that went up this morning, the Weeknd says that his next album is “the album I’ve always wanted to make.” He also plays a few tracks for writer Mark Anthony Green, who cautions that the new album isn’t finished yet but who still says rapturous things about it:

The music hit the studio like a Mack truck. The new project is packed with party records. Like real-deal, illuminated-white-tiles-on-the-floor party records. Quincy Jones meets Giorgio Moroder meets the best-night-of-your-fucking-life party records. Not anachronistic disco stuff. (Not “cosplay,” as Abel put it.) That sort of retro thing is having a moment right now in pop music, but these records are new. Sweaty. Hard. Drenched-suit, grinding-on-the-girl/boy-of-your-dreams party records.

So that sounds pretty good! Elsewhere in the interview, the Weeknd reiterates his stance that he’ll never submit his music to the Grammys again:

When [the Grammy snub] happened, I had all these ideas and thoughts. I was angry and I was confused and I was sad. But now, looking back at it, I never want to know what really happened…

I just don’t care. Because that will never be the reason why I do what I do. It never really was before. And I’m glad that I can make music and not have to think about that. I’ll never be in that conversation ever again…

I mean, I have no interest. Everyone’s like, “No, just do better next time.” I will do better, but not for you. I’m going to do better for me.

You can read the full GQ feature here.

UPDATE: “Take My Breath” is out Friday. Check out a preview in this Olympics promo…