Tough Cookie – announce Devotion EP, ‘Let Me Die (Curled In Your Arms)’ out now!

Art-grunge band Tough Cookie announce Devotion, their new EP out 23rd October via Gravity Records, alongside releasing their new single ‘Let Me Die (Curled In Your Arms)’.

Though technically Tough Cookie’s second project following 2025’s acclaimed The Countryside Is Good For You, Devotion feels like their true debut. After years of writing together in different forms, this is the moment everything clicked into place, an exercise in trusting instinct and embracing the freedom to create without compromise.

The EP takes its name and emotional thread from Patti Smith’s book Devotion, which frontperson and lyricist August was reading while writing the record on the road, stealing moments of time between load-ins and late-night drives. After committing to therapy, August found a new level of emotional honesty in their writing, with the book helping crystallise the themes running throughout the project: devotion to their art, to healing, and to continuing through uncertainty.

Today’s single ‘Let Me Die (Curled In Your Arms)’ captures the EP’s emotional core. August shared it’s “about getting close to someone or something because of how good it makes you feel, even when there’s something slightly unhealthy about the attachment”. The track follows on from their recent single ‘Mercy!’.

The full EP traces the aftermath of emotional wreckage, the helplessness of watching someone you love disappear into their own abyss, and the painful choices that sometimes come with self-preservation. At its heart is the close creative relationship between August and Dan, whose long conversations became central to the songwriting process, translating emotion into harmony, texture and arrangement. Guided by a shared love of artists who convey feeling as much through sound as words, Devotion draws on the yearning of Jeff Buckley, the raw intensity of Smashing Pumpkins and the intricate songwriting of Elliott Smith.

That sense of intimacy runs through every part of the record. August recorded and produced the entire EP over two weeks in the band’s “haunted” East London church basement rehearsal space, while also creating a bespoke series of paintings for each single and the EP artwork. Blurring the line between art and music, Devotion builds a world that feels organic, raw and cerebral, where every visual and musical decision forms part of the same artistic language.

Though written purely from August’s perspective, Devotion nevertheless became a collective act of healing and growth for Tough Cookie, finding something universal in its specificity and marking the point where the band truly found themselves.