Taking to Instagram, the Fontaines revealed the official artwork alongside the caption:

“We’ve got a new version of Skinty Fia coming out called Skinty Fia Go Deo, which translates to ‘Skinty Fia Forever’. The name memorialises a moment in time for us and brings together live sessions, covers and reworks from the Skinty Fia era.”

So far, however, fans have been deprived of a specific release date. Check out the post below:

Skinty Fia, Fontaines D.C.’s third studio album, was universally praised by critics upon its release last year. The LP became the group’s first number-one album in both Ireland and the UK and earned them a win at the 2023 Brit Awards, as well as a nomination for Album of the Year at the 2022 Choice Music Prizes.

Check out lead single “Jackie Down The Line” here:

Since Skinty Fia’s release, frontman Grian Chatten has embarked on a solo career, treating fans to a debut album in Chaos For The Fly. The project, which has been out since late June, marks a subtle departure from the electric guitar-based sound the Fontaines have cultivated over the years, favouring crooning vocals and acoustic finger-picking over driving bass-lines and snappy drums.

Listen to “Last Time Every Time Forever” from Chaos For The Fly: 

Meanwhile, a tireless Chatten has confirmed he and the band have been plotting their next move, and already have some rough ideas for their next record. Furthermore, he has admitted to becoming “increasingly bored and unsatisfied with writing for just a bassline and a drum kit”, and has even suggested that the future of Fontaines D.C. may see the band moving away from using guitars completely. 

“Whenever I have an idea for a tune, it doesn’t necessarily exist in a world of guitars and drums, even though those are the tools that we have to express ourselves with,” Chatten explained, going on to cite 808s & Heartbreak by Kanye West and ATliens-era OutKast as music that he currently finds himself coming back to the most.

Pre-order Skinty Fia Go Deo here.

If you are the one lucky enough to be on the receiving end of the program, you could spend 4 years researching your chosen field, be it songwriting, drums, vocals or guitar, as well as background knowledge on the ins and out of the industry, business practices, masterclass opportunities, and countless opportunities to network and collaborate around the industry. Fontaines D.C. bassist Conor Deegan commented, “We’re honoured to have a scholarship in our name.” Adding, “Our time [at] BIMM gave us time to figure out who we wanted to be as a band. We were given guidance on how to achieve our dreams. We’re looking forward to being able to help someone else succeed at their time there with this scholarship.”

BIMM Institute Dublin’s principal Alan Cullivan had this to say about the new collaboration, “having watched their career grow with great excitement both before and since they completed their studies”. Adding, “At BIMM, we are driven by a commitment to helping Ireland’s next generation of music talent achieve their creative goals and realise their ambitions as artists… to be able to offer that in collaboration with our former students is a bonus.”

 As well as all of this extra work trying to salvage what remains of music in the educational system this country has to offer, Fontaines D.C. are also in the midst of the build-up for their new album Skinty Fia. Set for release on April 20^th, the album will follow up their 2020 album A Hero’s Death. Three singles have been released so far: “Jackie Down The Line”, “I Love You”, and the title track. You can pre-order the new album here, and take a listen to the lead single below.

“Jackie Down The Line” feels like a natural progression the band’s last record, 2020’s A Hero’s Death. Frontman Grian Chatten’s signature beat poet droll is very much still present, however he seems to take a more melodic angle than usual, developing his accentuated spoken word vocals into an eerie singing style reminiscent of songs such as “Oh Such A Spring” from A Hero’s Death.

The instrumentals backing Chatten are suitably dark and moody, with bassist Conor Deegan leading the charge with melancholic, grumbling bass chords, paired with a driving drum beat from Tom Coll. The lyrics of the song marry well with the morose tonality of the instruments, with Chatten singing in the chorus: “I don’t think we’d rhyme, I will wear you down in time, I will hurt you, I’ll desert you, I am Jackie down the line”.

The band teased the impending release of new music last week and have now confirmed that their new album will be released on April 22^nd. Furthermore, the group’s debut live performance of the new single will air tonight on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.

The upcoming record can be pre-ordered here, and you can view the track list down below.

01. ‘In ár gCroíthe go deo’
02. ‘Big Shot’
03. ‘How Cold Love Is’
04. ‘Jackie Down The Line’
05. ‘Bloomsday’
06. ‘Roman Holiday’
07. ‘The Couple Across The Way’
08. ‘Skinty Fia’
09. ‘I Love You’
10. ‘Nabokov’

In other news, Fontaines D.C. will be embarking on a lengthy spring and summer tour in support of their new album, with shows in the UK, mainland Europe, North America, as well as a myriad of festival appearances such as Primavera Sound in Barcelona, Tempelhof in Berlin and Roskilde in Denmark. The band will be playing in the UK in July of this year. Tickets can be purchased here, and the dates can be viewed down below.

02/07/2022- Iveagh Gardens- Dublin
03/07- Iveagh Gardens- Dublin
08/07- Lytham Festival (w/ The Strokes)- Lytham St. Annes
09/07- TRNSMT Festival- Glasgow
15/07- Finsbury Park (w/ Sam Fender)- London

Presumably titled ‘Skinty Fia’ the new single was shared to us via the band’s socials, in the form of a YouTube premiere, set for 6PM GMT on Tuesday 11^th. This marks the first new studio recording since their sophomore album LP A Hero’s Death was released back in 2020, to solid critical and commercial acclaim. The popularity of the album lead to the band playing a huge headline show at London’s Alexandra Palace, where they would share the first of their first new material to the eagerly waiting fans. ‘I Love You’ begins nicely with its Johnny Marr-Esque jangly guitars, but by the end returns to the driving urgency the band have become known for. Watch a fan-shot video from the gig below.

During an interview with NME back in September, the band’s bassist Connor Deegan III explains, “The third album is really good,” which is a very good start, “We all thought the songs were quite poppy. We thought we’d got this sound that was finally the sound that we wanted to get across the songs, which we thought was quite poppy.” This could be good news, or bad news depending on what camp you sit in. But, “We showed them to our manager, and he said, ‘Lads, this is the darkest shit you’ve ever written!’ And we were like, ‘What? What are you talking about? This bass melody is catchy, this vocal melody is catchy’. He was just like, ‘No, this is extremely dark’. So there you go!”.

So whichever side of the fence you sit on regarding their possibly-pop-driven new direction, we know that it’s due soon after it was first confirmed to be pretty much finished back in March last year after a Reddit AMA with the band revealed “We just finished mixing the next record last week, sounding really great. It’s funny because we were so swept up with touring when we were writing a hero’s death, I think we only got a sense of what that record really is now.”

See here for the group’s full list of appearances in the summer.