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.

“Starburster” comes with a morbid music video directed by Aube Perrie. The track was inspired by a panic attack Chatten endured in London’s St Pancras station. After a sprawl of unsettling instrumentation, Chatten breaks into the song with a rap, which is not all that surprising since he teamed up with hip-hop trio Kneecap for “Better Way To Live” last fall.

Since the release of Skinty Fia, the band toured with Arctic Monkeys, guitarist Carlos O’Connell became a father, and Chatten shared his debut solo album, Chaos For The Fly. About the album title Romance, bassist Conor Deegan explained, “We’ve always had this sense of idealism and romance. Each album gets further away from observing that through the lens of Ireland, as directly as Dogrel. The second album is about that detachment, and the third is about Irishness dislocated in the diaspora. Now we look to where and what else there is to be romantic about.”

Stated influences include Shygirl, Sega Bodega, Mos Def, A$AP Ferg, OutKast, and the Prodigy. Chatten cites Katsuhiro Ôtomo’s anime Akira as a source of inspiration for the themes of the record. “I’m fascinated by that — falling in love at the end of the world,” he said. “The album is about protecting that tiny flame. The bigger Armageddon looms, the more precious it becomes.” O’Connell added, “This record is about deciding what’s fantasy — the tangible world, or where you go in your mind. What represents reality more? That feels almost spiritual for us.”

Watch the “Starburster” video below.

TRACKLIST:
01 “Romance”
02 “Starburster”
03 “Here’s The Thing”
04 “Desire”
05 “In The Modern World”
06 “Bug”
07 “Motorcycle Boy”
08 “Sundowner”
09 “Horseness Is The Whatness”
10 “Death Kink”
11 “Favourite”

Romance is out 8/23 on XL.