FONTAINES D.C. RELEASE NEW SINGLE “TONGUE”

Fontaines D.C (Grian Chatten, Carlos O’Connell, Conor Curley, Conor Deegan and Tom Coll) today release new single “Tongue” – the second song from the band’s forthcoming fifth studio album, Dopamine Chamber, released 16th October via XL Recordings. The song is accompanied by a video directed by John Angus Stewart and filmed by Fontaines D.C. in New York City.

Following the success of the opulent, rousing first single “Marianne”, “Tongue” showcases another side of Dopamine Chamber’s expansive sound. “We continued where Romance left off, leaving the live-band elements until they were really needed,” says Conor Curley of the song’s recording process. Conor Deegan created the slouchy bass by manipulating tape speed – a technique often used by Prince – evoking the loose, pitched character of sampled hip-hop bass. Carlos O’Connell pushed Chatten’s vocal through a sampler, distorting its pitch until it resembles a malicious extraterrestrial voice. Guitars screech, piano bellows and strings and orchestration gradually break apart the track’s stoic façade. The result is one of Dopamine Chamber’s most visceral songs: physical, garbled and alive, even as its human components are processed into unfamiliar shapes.

Dopamine Chamber is the follow-up to 2024’s UK platinum-certified Romance – and the sound of a band moving decisively away from the guitar language of their early records and into their most seductive music yet. Preceded by singles “Marianne” and “Tongue”, and featuring a collaboration with ROSALÍA on “Where Is Gone?”, the album arrives like a constellation behind undulating sighs of smog: potent balladry, anthemic melodies glinting through the murk. In a world tipping towards collapse, it asks how pleasure mutates amid peril—and what our pursuit of it reveals about us. “The album itself is a dopamine chamber,” says Chatten. “You step inside and we test these different mind- or mood-altering pieces of music on you.”

Across five albums, the Irish five piece have refused to repeat themselves – from Dogrel (2019) through A Hero’s Death (2020), the UK and Irish No. 1 Skinty Fia (2022) and the anarchic, kaleidoscopic Romance (2024). Dopamine Chamber is their most radical turn yet. It was made with James Ford between London, the English countryside and Palermo, where Chatten recorded vocals in a makeshift booth built from mattresses and cushions. “There’s a poignant sense of us being on the brink of some other kind of form of humanity, or non-humanity,” says Chatten. For their fifth album, Fontaines D.C. have built the chamber. What happens to the listener inside it will be the experiment.

Fontaines D.C.
Dopamine Chamber
16th October 2026 / XL Recordings

1. Six Shot Morning
2. Marianne
3. Mimesis
4. Happy For You
5. Demolition
6. Tongue
7. One Man
8. Where Is Gone? (with ROSALÍA)
9. You Miss Me
10. Japan
11. Intimate