Frankie Rose Releases HILA Album Sept. 18, 2026
The indie musician explores loss and grief through post-punk dynamics and yearning melodies on her most exploratory record to date.
Frankie Rose has released her new album Hila, out Sept. 18, 2026, via Born Losers / Night School.
'Hila. A record about loss. What persists beyond the range of ordinary perception? The place mourning keeps returning to — not quite transcendence, not quite doubt. The edge of what we can see,' reads a description of the album.
Frankie Rose has spent fifteen years building one of the most quietly distinctive bodies of work in American independent music. Bursting out of the shackles of her legacy on 2023's Love As Projection, 2026's Hila builds on the muscular, dance-ready songwriting and transcendent melodies to result on Rose's most exploratory and affecting record of her career. Imbued with yearning melodies and brooding post-punk dynamics, Hila is Frankie Rose at her most impressionistic and expansive.
Self-produced at her home studio featuring collaborations with drummer Justin Welch (Elastica/Lush), Hila was recorded following extensive touring with The Jesus & Mary Chain and Swervedriver. The result is the most confident, searching music Rose has produced; muscular in its production yet emotionally vulnerable in its diffracted neon glow. A record informed by loss and the way grief mutates the senses, it's fitting that Rose channels the nuanced darkness of later Coil, at times the pounding EBM-production of Skinny Puppy and the near-spiritual alien-ness of Cocteau Twins. On Hila, the doors of perception are constantly melting, revealing the porous nature of the seen and unseen. The result is a synesthesia that flips the senses.
If Love As Projection was an outward-looking record looking to embrace the world, Hila brings the dark cosmos into inner space. Rose's love for 80s production and soaring melodies remain, they're cornerstones to her craft after all, but there's something more assured and gothic underneath the massive waves of sound. Opener 'Olo' shimmers into a pulsating, cinematic brooder, Rose's vocal transcending and swan diving between registers in the chorus breakdowns. First single 'Cant Be Wrong' serves as a transition from the optimistic pop of Rose's previous album, introducing a thumping 80s funk rhythm track under the soaring vocal performance. The ebullient 'Shadow Twin' is that song's sibling, recalling major label-era Strawberry Switchblade melancholy mixed with Robin Guthrie's twinkling guitar work.
Hila blossoms darkly from here on in, blowing out into a glacial wide-screen sonic dynamic. On 'Rainman' and the title track, the listener is transported to a rain-soaked, nocturnal cityscape ridden with desire, moonlight cutting through blinds, intoxicating chasms without bounds. Rose's use of saxophone and digital synthesis recalls the nightmusic of Hats-era Blue Nile or the more ambient end of Emeralds' catalog. Indeed, in the towering synthetic cello sounds that climb into the mind on Hila, there's a distinct flavour of the instrumentals on Bowie's Low. This is musick to play in the dark, to light the way a little, just enough to trick the senses.
Leading into the strobe-filled haze, single 'Manifest' pounds forward with a massive Industrial 4/4 beat and post-punk/goth musicality, an exercise in unlit ecstasy. For 'Best Of Times,' the liberal saxophone passages feel like a suppressed, 80s Michael Mann soundtrack with Frankie Rose's effortless, melodic vocal performance probing, searching for connection. Navigating through the dry, iced landscape into a rising sun, closer 'Velvet Refrain' flips the melancholy of the preceding passages. With a massive sound dripping with harmony, the clanging guitar and vocal duet feels they're sound-tracking an unexpected happy ending after bouts of darkness.
The album can be pre-ordered here.
Tracklist
1. Olo
3. Return To Dust
4. Shadow Twin
5. Rainman
6. Hila
7. Manifest
8. Best Of Times
9. TV Star
10. Velvet Refrain
Tour Dates
Sep-15 Minneapolis MN Cloudland Theater
Sep-17 Chicago IL Park West *
Sep-19 Detroit MI El Club *
Sep-20 Toronto ON Danforth Music Hall *
Sep-21 Montreal QC Fairmont Theatre *
Sep-22 Boston MA The Paradise Rock Club *
Sep-23 Philadelphia PA Union Transfer *
Sep-25 Silver Spring MD The Fillmore Silver Spring *
Sep-26 Brooklyn NY Brooklyn Steel *
*=w/ The Charlatans UK
Photo Credit: Adam Barabas
Photo Credit: Adam Barabas
