Image Credit: Island Records

The Last Dinner Party have returned with a new chapter of their musical journey. On 17 July 2025, the London-based indie rock band released a new track, ‘This is the Killer Speaking’, marking the first single from their upcoming album, From The Pyre.

Last year the five-piece band enjoyed success having gained popularity after their hit debut single ‘Nothing Matters’ and the subsequent release of their critically acclaimed first album, Prelude to Ecstasy. It debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart, the biggest first-week debut in almost a decade. Despite facing criticism and accusations of being an ‘industry plant’, they went on to win two BRIT awards for Rising Star and Best New Artist, gaining further public recognition. After spending the last year touring after their album release, the band are currently in the midst of a festival run, during which they dropped their latest song. ‘This is the Killer Speaking’ was first performed live last year on 21 June 2024, and on the same day this year, some fans were invited to an exclusive listening party for the full studio recording at Pinkpop Festival in the Netherlands.

The track itself, a 4:54 minute dark-toned number, features interesting switches in tempo and intensity, creating an image of “the killer” as characterised through the lyrics, described as “wanted across several county lines” and “doing time”. This titular character addresses the subject of the song, ironically described as a “weeping saint” or “Angel”, contrasting the outlaw figure with an almost idealised Biblical being, even after the violence of a “brutal flaying”. The song combines heavier choruses with softer, almost spoken verses and pre-choruses, before launching into the catchy hook, “here comes the killer” / “here comes your girl”. In alternating the presence of “the killer” with “your girl”, the contrast continues to build up the imagined character as killer and lover combined. The band’s sound, which has been labelled as glam-rock, art-rock, and baroque pop, amongst other descriptors, is perhaps refreshing in the modern age of tech-heavy production, staying firmly rooted in live instrumentation and featuring strings, brass, and woodwind in combination with rock instruments.

The song was produced by Markus Dravs – who has previously worked with artists such as Coldplay, Florence + The Machine, and Wolf Alice – after the band had worked solely with James Ford producing their debut album. Accompanying the song is a music video directed by Harv Frost, who also directed the band’s album-companion short film Prelude to Ecstasy, which took inspiration from films such as Suspiria (1977), American Psycho (2001), and Possession (1981), highlighting the band’s darker and theatrical aesthetics in the visual representation of their debut.

The video for ‘This is the Killer Speaking’ combines gritty Western visuals with fantastical myth, with guitarist Lizzie Mayland portraying a bounty hunter on the lookout for lead singer Abigail Morris’ character of a centaur, tying into the metaphorical outlaw theme in the song’s lyrics. The visuals utilise the band’s ever-extravagant sense of style and vintage fashion, and take root primarily at a bar in a small town, switching between narrative and scenes of the band performing on stage. In this way, the video takes on a tone of magical realism, and is rooted firmly in the Western-inspired mythological world they have crafted as the home of their sophomore album, From the Pyre, which is set to release on 17 October.

According to the band in a press release about the album, “the songs are character driven but still deeply personal, a commonplace life event pushed to pathological extreme.” Of this track in particular, they describe the story of “being ghosted” turning into “a Western dance with a killer”. They also expressed that the album is “a little darker, more raw and more earthy; it takes place looking out at a sublime landscape rather than seated at an opulent table”. This is particularly evident in the album cover they revealed on 18 July, featuring, as they described, a landscape featuring various scenes including the titular pyre, and the imagery of swords, nature, sailors, and lambs.

A day later, they posted folkloric visuals evoking Midsommar in an album preview video, cryptically captioned: “Scythes, sailors, saints. Cowboys, floods, Mother Earth. Joan of Arc, and blazing infernos.” This forms a list of the band’s primary inspirations and themes for the album, remaining true to their theatrical magic in creating entire worlds through their music. These themes are also evident in the tracklist for the album, featuring tracks such as ‘Agnus Dei’, ‘Rifle’, and ‘Woman is a Tree’. As they have described it, “the concept of album-as-mythos” binds the stories the tracks tell. Of the album’s title they said: “‘The Pyre’ itself is an allegorical place in which these tales originate, a place of violence and destruction but also regeneration, passion and light.” I look forward to seeing how all of these elements and stories unfold on 17 October.