Arcade Fire returns for new album, Pink Elephant

Pink Elephant is Arcade Fire's first project since frontman Win Butler was accused of sexual misconduct in 2022.

By Emma Keates  |  April 8, 2025 | 12:02pm
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Arcade Fire returns for new album, Pink Elephant
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Arcade Fire is back with ten new “cinematic mystical punk” tracks for all your coffee shop playlist needs. Today, the band officially announced Pink Elephant, its seventh studio album, which was produced by members Win Butler and Régine Chassagne, along with Daniel Lanois. “When experienced in its entirety, Pink Elephant invites the listener on a sonic odyssey – a quest for life – that exists within the perception of the individual, a meditation on both darkness and light, the beauty within,” the band said of the album in a statement. “The layers of this condensed epic unfold to reveal new dimensions with each successive listen.”

The band also released the album’s first single, “Year Of The Snake,” today. Check it out below:

In a press release, Arcade Fire shared that the title Pink Elephant refers to “that paradoxical effect where the effort to suppress a thought leads to it being impossible to avoid.” Unfortunately, despite the group’s attempt to “shed its skin once again and [be] born anew” with “Year Of The Snake,” there is one thought that’s pretty hard to avoid in relation to this entire rollout. Pink Elephant is the first Arcade Fire project since frontman Win Butler was accused of sexual misconduct in 2022, leading both Beck and Feist to step away from the band’s tour in response.

The allegations against Butler also raise some eyebrows about the band’s decision to name its new app—a resource for fan exclusives like early access to tickets, music video premieres, and more—”Circle Of Trust,” a title taken from one of Pink Elephant‘s new songs.

We’ll see how this all filters into the music (or whether fans choose to engage with the music at all) when Pink Elephant releases this spring. You can check out the album’s tracklist below:

  1. Open Your Heart or Die Trying
  2. Pink Elephant
  3. Year of the Snake
  4. Circle of Trust
  5. Alien Nation
  6. Beyond Salvation
  7. Ride or Die
  8. I Love Her Shadow
  9. She Cries Diamond Rain
  10. Stuck In My Head

 
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