Today, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard has announced their 27th album Phantom Island, will be out on June 13 and the band has shared the lead single, “Deadstick.” The ditty is epic by how the music smacks the background with high quality rock, while the vocalist smoothly sings out the lyrics. “The songs felt like they needed this other energy and color, that we needed to splash some different paint on the canvas,” band member Mackenzie says.

While talking about about the song’s accompanying video, director Guy Tyzack says: “I started off wanting to create a frame that looked like a landscape painting with many different people and set pieces dotted about. Deadstick refers to when a plane propeller stops midflight so I decided to have a massive plane made out of cardboard crash land into a beautiful location. The song is big and chaotic so then I went about casting swing dancers and eccentric extras to fill the landscape.”

The roots of the upcoming album can be traced back to the group’s legendary show at the Hollywood Bowl in June 2023. Gizz met some members of  the Los Angeles Philharmonic backstage who urged them to take part in an annual series where the orchestra  plays alongside rock and pop acts.

Fast-forward to 2024, the Gizz are hunkered down in their clubhouse, plugged into tiny practice amps and choogling to their hearts’ content. The results of these sessions yield that year’s Aria-nominated Flight b741. But these sessions yielded ten further songs that didn’t quite fit the Flight b741 vibe, and which, Mackenzie says, “were harder to finish. Musically, they needed a little more time and space and thought.”

Photo Credit: Mauricio Alvarado