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Music

Wild Beasts Announce New LP and Drop the Video for "Get My Bang"

On 'Boy King' the English quartet dissect and explore male sexuality in the Tinder generation, but also write weirdly sexy songs about Black Friday.

What is Hayden Thorpe saying when he sings in that mellifluous falsetto, "That's how I get my bang"? Well obviously he's talking about getting his rocks off, chasing that thrill. We know we always say Wild Beasts are writing music about sex, but we'll never stop applauding them for that carnal honesty, and the same goes for the band's latest song "Get My Bang," which Thorpe assures isn't actually about sex, but rather, about the consumerist thrill of Black Friday. Below is the video for said song, which finds him slinking and dancing through dark streets, interpretive dancing, preening, posturing, and making out.

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Musically "Get My Bang" is a mimimalist affair for the English chaps—sparse drums, angrily fuzzed synths, and of course the dancing, duelling vocals of Thorpe's fluttering register and Tom Fleming's earthy baritone refrain. It offers raunch, but a grit and angst too.

Today the quartet announce their fifth album, Boy King, produced by John Congleton (St. Vincent, Swans, The War on Drugs) in Texas and out August 5, via Domino.

"On the last day of making Boy King I had a minor breakdown in knowing what part of myself I was revealing. It's a bit ugly, a bit grubby, arrogant," explains Thorpe. To be frank, there's no point in creating art if there's no honesty there. Apparently Boy King is the opposite of their last record, the plush Present Tense, and the seeds of the record came about when Wild Beasts went in for a writing session for Disclosure. The songs were never used but laid the foundation and tone for their new work going forward.

According to the band, Boy King is a record for the Tinder generation, probing the dark corners of desire where everyone now has license to create, explore, and inhabit a range of sexual identities. But also, as ever, Wild Beasts speak to the male experience in this day and age. Is the male identity in crisis? They're down to tackle the topic. Or as Thorpe notes in his particular way: "It became apparent that that guitar almost became the character within the songs, that phallic character, the all-conquering male. I'm letting my inner Byron fully out, I thought I'd tucked him away, but he came screaming back like the Incredible Hulk."

Wild Beasts: Unleashed!

Wild Beasts are returning this year with their fifth