Indie rock band Bloc Party have announced a new album, the follow-up to 2012’s Four. Lead vocalist Kele Okereke also premiered a clip of “Exes,” one of the song ideas for the forthcoming album.
Okereke announced the news on Australia’s Triple J radio while he is down under touring for his solo album, Trick. Though he performed part of “Exes,” there is no guarantee that track will make it onto the album, according to Stereogum. Okereke told the radio station that the band is in the recording phase for the upcoming record.
“I guess it’s the first time that I have talked about it but we are making a record at the moment. It’s sounding like nothing that we’ve done before but that’s what everyone always says. We’re at the writing/recording phase. We’ve started recording — I think we have about 18 [song] ideas and we’re going to lay them down properly in the next few months,” said Okereke.
He added, “We’ve always had very disparate elements to our music… this record feels like an evolution of where we were. So far there’s nothing that I can compare it to really in terms of other musicians, whereas in the past I always could — we were always trying to reference something else. I feel that this is very much our own record … I’m very excited by it.”
He demonstrated this new sound when he played almost 30 seconds of “Exes,” which you can hear below.
Though Okereke will be performing solo at Coachella, he made it clear that the new Bloc Party album, which is the band’s fifth full-length, will be his priority over the summer. There is no word on when the album will be released, but it’s probably safe to say fans won’t have to wait too much longer.