Over the past decade, Mary Jane Dunphe has been part of a constellation of undersung underground bands that have included Vexx, CC Dust (and its offshoot CCFX), Gen Pop, the Country Liners, and more. (I’ve always loved CCFX’s maudlin masterpiece “The One To Wait.”)

Today, Dunphe is announcing her debut solo album, Stage Of Love, which will be released in August, and she’s sharing the album’s title track. It’s a dense, gothically-inclined smear that still manages to pack in a pulsing hook: “On the stage of love we give what we don’t have.”

“It’s about longing and trying to understand the difference between desiring love and just desiring,” Dunphe explained in some press materials. “It’s about the pleasure and the suffering of the lack, and breathing into it.”

Listen below.

TRACKLIST:
01 “Stage Of Love”
02 “Phantom Heart”
03 “Longing Loud”
04 “Moon Halo”
05 “Opening Of A Field”
06 “Just Like Air”
07 “Always Gonna Be The Same”
08 “I Know A Girl Called Johnny”
09 “Starless Night”
10 “Saint Dymphna”

Stage Of Love is out 8/25 via Pop Wig Records.