FONTAINES DC

Fontaines refuse to repeat themselves, moving from raw punk on Dogrel to atmospheric expansiveness on Skinty Fia and electronic-tinged experimentation on Romance. Dopamine Chamber, their new album (dropping Octboer 16) promises an evolution to 2024's album ROMANCE. IT arrives like a constellation behind undulating sighs of smog: potent balladry, anthemic melodies glinting through the murk. In a world tipping towards collapse, it asks how pleasure mutates amid peril—and what our pursuit of it reveals about us. “There’s a poignant sense of us being on the brink of some other kind of form of humanity, or non-humanity,” says Chatten.