The Flaming Lips Announce 'The Teardrop Throbs,' Their First Album in Six Years
The Oklahoma band's 17th studio album arrives January 22, 2027, on Third Man Records, with a first single out now and two-night stands in Nashville, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and London.
The Flaming Lips will release a new album on January 22, 2027. The Teardrop Throbs is the band's 17th studio album and its first album of new material in more than six years.
The record comes out on Third Man Records, the label founded by Jack White. It is the Oklahoma band's first album outside Warner since 1990's In a Priest Driven Ambulance, and its first studio album without longtime multi-instrumentalist Steven Drozd since 1992.
The 13-track album was produced by the band with Taylor Johnson, Dave Fridmann and Scott Booker, with additional production from Jon Fridmann and Mike Fridmann. It will be available digitally, on CD and on vinyl, including a limited "Teardrop Blue" pressing.
The first single, "God Will Control the Werewolves," is out now. Frontman Wayne Coyne said it started with a game of hide-and-seek with his sons, Bloom and Rex, at a park as darkness fell under a full moon. When one of the boys asked whether the werewolves would get them while they hid, Coyne told him God would control the werewolves for a little while.
Fatherhood runs through the rest of the record, too. Coyne said the album took shape over two years, after he misread a sign in a Trader Joe's parking lot as "Children's Death Foundation" while his young son Rex slept in the back seat. The sign actually read "Children's Health Foundation." Coyne wrote that the mistake stuck with him anyway, and that what is on your mind usually finds its way into your music whether you intend it to or not.
The band's last album of new material was 2020's American Head. Drozd, who joined the band in 1991, is no longer a member. Coyne and Drozd have given different accounts of how the split happened.
Two-night stands in five cities
The band will play the new album in a series of intimate two-night stands. The run opens January 22 and 23 at the Brooklyn Bowl in Nashville, then moves to Irving Plaza in New York on January 26 and 27.
It continues at the Bellwether in Los Angeles on February 23 and 24, the Metro in Chicago on February 27 and 28, and O2 Shepherd's Bush in London on April 2 and 3. The band's presale begins October 28, with general sale October 30. More dates are to be announced.
Before the new album arrives, the band will also put out a 20th anniversary reissue of At War with the Mystics on November 13.
