Nick & June – release new single ‘Anthem’ + new album ‘New Year’s Face’ out in December

Berlin duo Nick & June have recently announced the release of their new album ‘New Year’s Face‘ on 5th December. Produced by Grammy-winning producer Peter Katis (The National, Interpol, Sharon Van Etten,) and recorded in Bridgeport, Connecticut, ‘New Year’s Face’, which includes collaborations with Owen Pallett, The National’s Kyle Resnick and Ben Lanz, The Antlers and others, will be released on CD, vinyl and digitally. ‘New Year’s Face’ is the duo’s first release since 2023’s ‘Beach Baby, Baby EP’, which enjoyed over 30 million streams, widespread critical praise and led to sold-out shows across Europe. 

Today they share new single ‘Anthem‘: indie rock, driving drums, shimmering synths, majestic horns sweeping across the scene like a signal over the city. Everything feels massive and airy, hymn-like yet casual. It’s a song about preserving moments, holding onto fragments that would otherwise slip away. A breath between melancholy and force. A song that, in its ambivalence, captures the fleeting intensity Nick & June are always chasing.

At the end of a long relationship, you don’t usually find yourself sitting at a studio piano with your ex, writing songs. Or do you? In this case, you pack a suitcase, get on a plane, decamp to the small and melancholic harbour town of Bridgeport, Connecticut and begin work on a new record. ‘New Year’s Face’ is the outcome of this strange experiment: two ex-lovers, one studio, months of work and discovery. Together with Grammy-winning producer Peter Katis (The National, Interpol, Sharon Van Etten, Stars), they settled in and shaped ten songs that feel at once intimate and expansive, fragile and resilient.

Nick & June drift through a shimmering haze of reverb-soaked guitars, vibrating synths and gently pulsing beats and drums. Their voices merge into a hypnotic mélange, guiding listeners through a delicate balance of euphorically staged restraint and intricate, winding thoughts. Their sound is an eclectic fusion of indie folk, evoking Bon Iver, Velvet Underground and Big Thief, blended with the dream-pop textures of Beach House and Lana Del Rey and the alternative rock of The National, St. Vincent and Mazzy Star.

The album’s title track begins in a hazy, almost offhand way, the voices of Suzie-Lou and Nick wrapping around each other like figures slowly beginning to recognise one another. Tracks ‘Dark Dark Bright’ and ‘Anthem’ feature majestic brass arrangements orchestrated by The National’s Kyle Resnick and Ben Lanz. ‘Crying In A Cool Way’ emerges from distorted bass and shimmering synths, a triumph for the emotionally-distant and the romantically-derailed. New York’s The Antlers, long an inspiration for Nick & June, appear on ‘2017’ and ‘Pinker Moon’, both meditations on childhood, coming-of-age moments and the fleeting beauty of transience. On ‘The Boy With The Jealous Eyes’, Spanish lo-fi songwriter Russian Red steps in alongside keyboard virtuoso and Sufjan Stevens’ collaborator Thomas Bartlett. The grand finale ‘Husband & Wife’—more requiem than song—closes the album with an orchestral farewell.

The songs on this album are essays on love, loss, time and self-discovery. They recall conversations with grandparents, fleeting childhood images, moments that can’t be explained, the fragility of being human in all its absurd and wonderful totality: who we were, who we are, who we might become. More than anything, it is not a break-up album. It is a debut, a personal opus magnum.