According to Charli XCX, it's about to be a These New Puritans summer. The alt-pop superstar included TNP in her onstage video shout-out montage at Coachella, so we can assume she's stoked for the release of the experimental electronic rock group's new album Crooked Wing next month. Presumably the presence of her friend and collaborator Caroline Polachek on lead single "Industrial Love Song" did not hurt. Further amping up the anticipation today is a video for new single "A Season In Hell" starring prestige TV favorite Alexander Skarsgård, directed by Harley Weir.
Statements? They've got 'em! Here's TNP's Jack Barnett on the music:
The song features two pipe organs, two sopranos, and two hundred drums. When I was writing it, images of vast, inhuman machinery kept coming into my head - enormous chains, pulleys, grinding gears, molten iron. Huge machines driving into the centre of the earth. And every now and then, a little human amongst it all, barely visible. Then I saw Piranesi’s etchings of "imaginary prisons" from the 1700s, and that’s exactly what had been in my head. If we could resurrect him, maybe we could have persuaded him to do the album artwork.
As for the video, Barnett's twin brother and bandmate George Barnett weighs in:
It was great to bring Alexander Skarsgård and Harley Weir together. They’re both old friends of mine, especially Harley who I've known since we were teenagers; we share formative tenets and ideas in our work. She makes the familiar strange and the strange familiar.
Skarsgård is a rare artist who can move from something experimental to a blockbuster and back. Everything he does is believable. He is high risk, threw himself into it, every detail in him is controlled. He’s magnetic in an otherworldly way, and that worked so well with what Harley does.
Watch below.
these new puritans summer?????? pic.twitter.com/wJD8MdyRex
— yuka..9.. (@yukacmu) April 20, 2025
Crooked Wing is out 5/23 via Domino.
