After teasing new music with their trailer ‘Be With You’ last week, British alternative rock trio Muse have spent the last few days building up to today’s new trailer ‘The Red Ascent’, which revealed their new 2026 album ‘The Wow! Signal’ and lead single ‘Be With You’.
The Devon three-piece have been busy in the studio since last single ‘Unravelling’ released in 2025, which expanded on their experimental approach to rock music by introducing heavy metal and dark EDM sounds to the mix. Last week’s clip titled ‘Be With You’ was the first taste of new music, depicting frontman Matt Bellamy playing an organ and singing in a dark red church scene. The composition was a rousing, uplifting hymn, leading into a message with a mysterious string of characters that sleuths on the site Reddit identified as a reference to ‘The Wow! Signal’ incident. ‘The Wow! Signal’ was a 1977 event where an unusual radio frequency was detected in the US, and many considered this evidence of extra-terrestrial life.
The suspense built up until 5PM today when the timer they posted on their social media stories was set to elapse. It follows a campaign of cryptic flavour videos revolving around sci-fi themes of alien contact and mysteries in the night sky. 4 days ago a spoken word video captioned “The signs appeared quickly” was uploaded, and 2 days later unnerving video “A light which did not belong” was posted, before last night’s final “Then one night… the sky changed…” video.
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When the timer hit zero on their Youtube stream named ‘The Red Ascent’, the video opened with an aerial shot of a digital screen inscribed with “THE WOW! SIGNAL” being hoisted into the upper atmosphere on a balloon. The screen then displays the message “INCOMING TRANSMISSION. NEW ALBUM: ‘THE WOW! SIGNAL’ . 26.JUNE.2026. THE SINGLE ‘BE WITH YOU’ OUT NOW”
The feed then led into the premiere of ‘Be With You’ and its cinematic music video. After the organ introduction from the initial snippet, the song grows into a bright electronic pop-rock ballad, with luscious synthesiser swells, later adding crunchy guitar and bass riffs. Bellamy’s voice is incredible as ever, and his guitar solo closing the track off brings the piece together as another of Muse’s arena-rock classics, destined for the biggest of stages. The video retains the deep red hue of their previous media, and shows a story of two people who escape the problems of their life by having a paranormal experience together, under an ominous red moon.
‘The Wow! Signal’ releases on the 26th of June, with streaming pre-saving and physical pre-orders are already up on Muse’s official website. With the band’s usual approach to announcing tours suddenly, you can expect a stadium run or festival appearances to be announced soon. The full track listing is as follows:
- The Dark Forest
- Nightshift Superstar
- Shimmering Scars
- Cryogen
- Be With You
- Hexagons
- The Sickness In You & I
- Unravelling
- Hush
- Space Debris
