The Flaming Lips announce «The Teardrop Throbs», their first new album in six years
The Flaming Lips announce The Teardrop Throbs for January 22, 2027, with first single God Will Control the Werewolves.
Six years after their last album of entirely new material, The Flaming Lips have a date for their next chapter. «The Teardrop Throbs», the band’s seventeenth studio record, is scheduled for January 22, 2027. It also marks the Oklahoma group’s debut on Jack White’s Third Man Records.
The announcement arrives with music already available: «God Will Control the Werewolves» is the first single. Its unsettling, faintly absurd title belongs naturally to Wayne Coyne’s world, while the orchestral melancholy described around the release points toward the group’s more emotionally direct side.
Why the six-year gap matters
«American Head», released in 2020, showed a more introspective side of the band, exploring memory, family and mortality without abandoning its psychedelic imagination. That makes the wait for «The Teardrop Throbs» about more than counting years. The question is whether the new record follows that emotional path, breaks away from it or finds a third direction. One single cannot settle that question.
Third Man Records is an intriguing home for a group whose physical releases, ambitious artwork and elaborate live performances have long belonged to the wider creative experience. The label’s emphasis on records as tangible objects suits the band, although it says more about presentation than the unheard music.
An unlikely route to emotionally expansive pop
Since forming in Oklahoma City in 1983, The Flaming Lips have followed a path that few alternative bands could reproduce. Their records can move from noisy psychedelic experiments to delicate melodies without treating the two as incompatible. «The Soft Bulletin» and «Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots» remain landmarks for that balance of intimacy and spectacle.
For that reason, the question around «The Teardrop Throbs» is bigger than whether the group can recapture an earlier period. Its long career has been built on changing the framework while preserving a recognizable imagination. The album was produced by The Flaming Lips, Taylor Johnson, Dave Fridmann and Scott Booker, with additional work from Jon Fridmann and Mike Fridmann.
What has been confirmed
The record will be available digitally, on CD, and on black and «Teardrop Blue» vinyl. What has not yet been heard is the album as a complete sequence; it would be premature to describe the unreleased tracks or declare a sonic reinvention on the strength of one single.
«God Will Control the Werewolves» opens a new period for a band that made unpredictability a lasting identity. The full picture arrives in January. Album announcement and pre-order details.