Naarm/Melbourne songwriter Chitra today shares her latest offering from her debut album You Can See When It’s Dark (out August 1), by way of her latest single ‘Autumn’. LISTEN TO ‘AUTUMN’ HERE + PRE-SAVE THE LP HERE.

A self proclaimed “slow motion freefall,” ‘Autumn’ is based on the arresting hook ‘everything is boring’, speaking as “someone craving chaos as an antidote to routine, yet still trapped within it”. Arriving as Chitra’s closest lilt to Phoebe Bridgers or Nilufer Yanya, ‘Autumn’ was written with Alexander Biggs (Julien Baker) to channel a push-and-pull dynamic, propelled by incandescent chords and the confessional lyricism that is reflective of Chitra’s ability to unlock new creative heights through storytelling and production craft.

Of the track Chitra reveals, “Alexander Biggs and I started writing ‘Autumn’ as this silly alphabetical challenge at the start of each line, but somewhere in the writing process it became this raw confession about how I’ve been feeling lately. There are days when everything feels so predictable and small that I catch myself wanting to do something completely reckless just to feel awake again. Like, I’ll be going through the same motions – work, sleep, repeat – and I’m practically aching for something, anything, to disrupt it all and remind me that I’m actually living, not just surviving.”

She continues, “Writing this song was like admitting that sometimes I romanticise chaos because it feels more alive than the safety of routine. But then we wrote the bridge, and it became this moment where I stopped fighting against the stillness and found something unexpectedly comforting in just being present with where I am right now.”

Set to appear on her anticipated debut album You Can See It When It’s Dark, ‘Autumn’ joins previous singles ‘Big Shot’, ‘In My Opinion’, ‘Close Proximity’, ‘Go Easy’ and ‘Motormouth’; each a glimpse into a record that explores the tension and beauty of duality—rage and softness, grief and joy, solitude and community. Spanning four years of life and transformation, the album is a document of emotional survival, creative rebirth, and personal reckoning.

“I committed to writing what I craved to hear, not what others expected me to sound like,” Chitra says of the album. “I needed something that felt bigger, more expansive, and honestly, more fun to play. I had this persistent urge to dance around a stage or scream into a pillow—a release for everything that had been building up inside.”

Produced by John Castle (Cub Sport, Angie McMahon, Hatchie), the album reflects both Chitra’s gift for songwriting and her growing sense of creative self-assurance. Its tracks range from explosive and bold to intimate and meditative, embracing contradiction as a form of truth. With You Can See It When It’s Dark, Chitra steps fully into her voice—clear-eyed, unfiltered, and unapologetically her own.