Lykke Li unveils new album in May

Lykke Li announces EYEYE (pronounced EYE), an immersive audiovisual album. EYEYE reunites her with longtime collaborator Björn Yttling, their first time working together since 2014’s acclaimed I NEVER LEARN. Recorded in her bedroom in Los Angeles, EYEYE, due May 20, is Lykke’s attempt to compress a lifetime of romantic obsession and female fantasy into a hyper sensory landscape.

The album is accompanied by seven visual loops: together, the music and visuals reveal a grander narrative, a story about the eternally returning cycles of love, addiction, relapse and obsession (the album’s title and running time are palindromic). Listen to “NO HOTEL” here.

After four studio albums, Lykke wanted to use a different palette to make EYEYE. She imposed a dogmatic set of rules to govern each aspect of the production. There were no clicktracks, no headphones, and no digital instruments. The vocals were recorded on a handheld $70 drum mic, often in the moment of composition, giving the lyrics the still-beating sound of fresh heartbreak being whispered into your ear. The album was mixed to tape by Shawn Everett over several months in Los Angeles.

The result is a stripped-down production, with analog synths. “I wanted the record to have the intimacy of listening to a voice memo on a macro dose of LSD,” Lykke says.

A visual component of EYEYE (PREVIEW) will be released alongside the record. Directed by Theo Lindquist and shot on 16 mm film by cinematographer Edu Grau (A Single Man, Passing), the one-minute videos are meant to be viewed as fragments of a larger story. (The male star is Jeff Wilbusch, from Oslo and Unorthodox.)

“We wanted to capture the beauty and grandeur of a three-hour European arthouse movie, while making something native to modern media,” Lykke says. “The intention is to deliver the full impact of a movie in sixty seconds on a phone screen, which is where most of our emotional experiences happen now anyway.” The videos evoke the album’s core themes of fantasy, repetition, and the infinite loops we’re stuck in. They will be released across all platforms including Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.

Tickets for the tour go on sale April 1. 

Track listing:

NO HOTEL
YOU DON’T GO AWAY
HIGHWAY TO YOUR HEART
HAPPY HURTS
CAROUSEL
5D
OVER
ü&i

Tour Dates:

9.26 - San Diego, CA - The Observatory
9.28 - San Francisco, CA - The Warfield
9.30 - Los Angeles, CA - Ace Theatre
10.3 - Minneapolis, MN - The Fillmore
10.4 - Chicago, IL - The Vic Theatre
10.6 - Toronto, ON - Queen Elizabeth Theatre
10.8 - New York, NY - Apollo Theater