Fontaines D.C. Release MARIANNE Video Directed by Dave Meyers
Grian Chatten stars in the clip, which arrives ahead of the band's fifth studio album, produced by James Ford.
Fontaines D.C. have released the video for 'Marianne,' the first single from their fifth studio album. The video is directed by Dave Meyers, the visual architect behind Kendrick Lamar's 'HUMBLE.' and Travis Scott's 'SICKO MODE'.
Starring Fontaines D.C. frontman Grian Chatten, the video is opulent and hallucinatory, matching the sentiments of the single. 'Marianne' is a song about escapism and hedonism and works as a siren call, offering the listener a getaway from – or towards – oblivion. 'This year, you should come and stay here / You can follow my lead / I can help you disappear,' Chatten sings, as the arrangement glistens around him. Underneath the single's seduction is a harder question: how willingly might a person surrender their imagination, when the alternative is to remain fully conscious of catastrophe?
Fontaines D.C.'s fifth album Dopamine Chamber will be released on October 16th via XL Recordings. Produced by James Ford, it's the follow-up to 2024's UK platinum-certified Romance – and the sound of a band moving decisively away from the guitar language of their early records into something colder, stranger and more synthetic. 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 the pursuit of it reveals about the people chasing it.
Across the album, Fontaines D.C. – Grian Chatten, Carlos O'Connell, Conor Curley, Conor Deegan and Tom Coll – move between gratification and dread until the two meld together, reflecting the overwhelm of artificial intelligence, environmental collapse and political violence all riding the same algorithms as memes, jokes and celebrity culture. 'The album itself is a dopamine chamber,' says Chatten. 'You step inside and we test these different mind- or mood-altering pieces of music on you.'
Fontaines D.C. have spent five albums refusing to repeat themselves – from Dogrel (2019) through A Hero's Death (2020), the UK and Irish No. 1 Skinty Fia (2022) and the anarchic, kaleidoscopic Romance (2024). Dopamine Chamber is their most radical turn yet: cold synthesiser tones, marching drums, samples and triggers, several songs with no guitars at all, and the swooning strings of 1960s Italian pop pulled into something synthetic. It was made with Ford between London, the English countryside and Palermo, where Chatten recorded vocals in a makeshift booth built from mattresses and cushions. 'There's a poignant sense of us being on the brink of some other kind of form of humanity, or non-humanity,' says Chatten.
Following shows across Europe this month, Fontaines D.C. will headline the Reading & Leeds and Electric Picnic festivals over the August bank holiday weekend.
Fontaines D.C. Live
August 18th - Les Docks, Lausanne, Switzerland
August 20th - FM4 Frequency, Sankt Polten, Austria
August 28th - Reading Festival, UK
August 29th - Leeds Festival, UK
August 30th - Electric Picnic, Ireland
September 18th - Shaky Knees, Atlanta, GA, USA
September 20th - Sea.Hear.Now, Asbury Park, NJ, USA
September 27th - Ohana Festival, Dana Point, CA, USA
Photo Credit: Elizaveta Porodina
Photo Credit: Elizaveta Porodina
