Today, Tom Iansek has released ‘Hard Questions’, the third single and a Geoffrey Taylor-directed video, from his forthcoming fourth album, #1 Dads, Every Little Fire, out Oct 16 via Pieater. Alongside it comes the announcement of his forthcoming London headline show at St Matthias Church on February 19, 2027. This follows his 23-date run through Australia this October and November — his first time back in the country in six years, and the first tour he’s played entirely alone under the #1 Dads name. LISTEN HERE, WATCH HERE, PRE-SAVE LP HERE + BUY TICKETS HERE.

Where ‘Already Something’ found resolve in staying, ‘Hard Questions’ sits with what staying actually costs, day to day; the small compromises, the doubts nobody says out loud, the moments you fall short of the person you meant to be. This is a song about muddling through, and doing your best.

“Sometimes in our lives there are a lot more questions than there are answers,” Iansek says. “This is the other side of the coin to ‘Already Something.’ Amongst the slow-building resilience and beauty that comes from sticking a relationship out, there is the everyday, where you must show up continually to your life and the decisions you make, often far from the best version of yourself. In this everyday, you naturally question your decisions — ‘should I stay?’, perhaps — amongst a slew of other difficult questions.”

WATCH: #1 Dads – ‘Hard Questions’ (Official Video)

The Australian dates will be solo, stripped back to just Iansek and a room, pulling from across the #1 Dads catalogue and new songs from Every Little Fire.

Every Little Fire chronicles an especially transformative stretch for Iansek: becoming a father to two young children, and relocating his personal and professional life from Melbourne/Naarm to London. “It was not an easy thing to do,” he says. “It has been an insane, wonderful, chaotic, intense and joyful period of my life.” Across 12 self-produced tracks, the album wrestles with carving out stability and artistic fulfilment amid that upheaval — a theme it names outright on ‘Evaluation Period’, where Iansek sings, “Every little fire is not the end of me.”

He produced and mixed the record himself, largely out of a bedroom studio, working with London-based musician Chris Hyson and engineer/drummer Lloyd Haynes, with remote contributions from bassist Antoine Katz, bandmate Gus Rigby, vocalist Georgia Potter, Jordan White (aka BrailleFace), and engineer Isaac Barter on strings. The result favours torchlit piano, lush strings and understated guitar over studio polish — tempos drift, breaths stay in the mix, and takes run longer than a bigger studio would allow. “The bolder option is to have less, and to really trust that that’s enough,” Iansek says of the album’s stripped-back arrangements, which draw as much from Burt Bacharach and Ennio Morricone as from songwriters like Leonard Cohen, Adrienne Lenker and Cameron Winter.

Lead single ‘Already Something’ — a brass-laden ode to partnerships that outlast adversity, featuring a saxophone solo from Gus Rigby — drew early notice from Atwood Magazine, which described it as a striking return from an artist whose songwriting has long outpaced his public profile. Elsewhere on the record, the tyranny of distance runs through the slow-burning ‘Love No Light’, the anthemic ‘Post Card’ tracks the work of rebuilding a home from “a million cuts and bruises’, and the bustling ‘Tonight Alive’ opens the album’s more upbeat, synth-led side.

Catch Iansek bringing Every Little Fire to life across Australia this October/November. Full tour dates and ticket links below.