Flaming Lips New Album Ends a Six-Year Wait in January

The Flaming Lips new album is officially on the way, and it lands sooner than most fans expected. The Oklahoma psych-pop band announced The Teardrop Throbs on Monday, a record that arrives on January twenty-second through Third Man Records, according to Rolling Stone. It is the group's first collection of fresh material in six years, and it comes with a lead single, a full track list, and a run of small-room shows in 2027.

What the Flaming Lips new album actually is

Rolling Stone describes The Teardrop Throbs as the seventeenth Flaming Lips album, following 2020's American Head. The band has spent four decades building a catalogue that swings from noisy basement experiments to the glittering, strange pop of their biggest records. Clash Magazine notes that the new project follows a rare slow period in activity, and calls it the band at their brightest and most effervescent.

The record is thirteen songs long. It opens with a track called "Throb," moves through titles like "Titan," "Every Teardrop Cried," and "Hooray," and closes with "Now I Understand." There is also a very long song title about drawing an eyeball, which is exactly the kind of chaotic detail longtime fans will have been hoping for. Another track is named "You've Got Brain Damage," a nod that sits close to the Pink Floyd energy the frontman keeps pointing at.

According to Clash, the album can be pre-ordered now and will come out digitally, on CD, and on vinyl, including a Teardrop Blue pressing alongside the standard black one.

The werewolf single and its Pink Floyd daydream

The first taste is "God Will Control the Werewolves," and its origin story is pure Flaming Lips. Wayne Coyne told Rolling Stone it was inspired by his sons, Bloom and Rex, who were playing hide and seek during a full moon. One of the boys wondered whether werewolves would catch them while they hid. Coyne's answer was that God would keep the werewolves under control for a little while, just long enough to finish the game.

Musically, Coyne said the sound he heard in his head was something like Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, but with Syd Barrett still in the band. That is a very specific, very Flaming Lips way to describe a song. Clash calls the single an otherworldly blast of super-imaginative psych-pop, which tracks with the playful, slightly eerie premise.

A tour built around two different sets

To celebrate the release, the group is planning a series of intimate shows in five cities, and the format is unusual. In each city they will play two nights. One night leans on the new record and songs from the band's early years. The other features reimagined versions of The Teardrop Throbs plus material from the two-thousands onward.

The dates, as listed by Rolling Stone, start in Nashville at Brooklyn Bowl on January twenty-second and twenty-third. New York follows at Irving Plaza on January twenty-sixth and twenty-seventh. Los Angeles is next at The Bellwether on February twenty-third and twenty-fourth, then Chicago's Metro on February twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth. The run ends in London at the O2 Shepherds Bush Empire on April second and third.

Ticket timing is tight. Pre-sales open Wednesday and Thursday at ten in the morning local time, and the general on-sale begins Friday at ten a.m. local time through the band's official website. With only two nights per city and venues this small, expect fast sellouts.

The big change: no Steven Drozd

The biggest story behind the music is who is missing. Rolling Stone reports this will be the first Flaming Lips record without multi-instrumentalist Steven Drozd, who joined the band in 1991. At the end of last year, Drozd said he was officially done with the group after a personal crisis led him to step back from touring.

The two sides tell the story differently. Drozd said he wanted to stay on as a non-touring member but disagreed with Coyne about what that role should look like, and that stepping back slowly turned into not coming back. Coyne pushed back publicly on Instagram, writing that the reason Drozd left is sad and infuriating, and that what Drozd told everyone was a lie. Neither account has been independently verified, so it is best treated as an open dispute for now.

Why this one matters for music fans

For Gen Z listeners who found the band through viral clips or a parent's record shelf, this is a rare chance to catch a legacy act at a very human scale. Clubs holding a few hundred people are a world away from festival fields, and the two-set structure rewards fans who want both the deep cuts and the new stuff.

It also marks a turning point for the band's identity. Losing a member who has been there for more than three decades could have meant a quieter, more cautious album. Instead, the early signals point to another weird, colourful swing. The band also marked the twentieth anniversary of At War With the Mystics this year with a reissue packed with rarities, so the timing of a fresh record feels like a deliberate next chapter.

Keep an eye on the music section for more album drops, tour announcements, and surprises as they happen. For now, the ticket scramble starts Wednesday, and the album itself is only a few months away.