Slow Pulp Announce Third Album ‘Melodie,’ Share Lead Single “Better Man”

Slow Pulp’s third album arrives with a quiet internal shift. Melodie, out September 18th on ANTI-, doesn’t rewrite the band’s identity so much as reexamine how it’s built. Where vocalist Emily Massey typically handled the lyrics, guitarist Henry Stoehr contributed five of the record’s eleven songs — a return to an early collaborative method. “Emily and I were reconnecting with how we wrote together when we first met,” he said in a statement.

The record also marks the first time the band has worked with an outside producer. Elliott Kozel (Rosalía, Björk, Yves Tumor) stepped in where Stoehr had previously produced everything himself. That handover, by the band’s own account, wasn’t frictionless — but the result, they say, is a set that balances power-pop push and acoustic vulnerability without losing its center.

Lead single “Better Man” captures that tension. It’s built on colliding percussion and anthemic guitar, with Massey’s vocal riding high over a lyric about self-acceptance and the impulse to kill an older version of yourself. Stoehr described the song as an attempt to take control while letting go — a theme that runs through the album. Bassist Alex Leeds puts it plainly: “There’s the sense of a full circle, tapping back into things and transforming through them.”

Slow Pulp begin a North American tour in St. Louis on October 16th.