Kelsey Lu shares new single ‘Portrait Of A Lady On Fire’ from forthcoming album So Help Me God out June 12th via Dirty Hit
PRAISE FOR Kelsey Lu
“Songwriting where the massive ambition is matched by quality and intention: Lu returns with a giant synth-pop ballad about masochistically finding life-force in a callous lover.”
“A classically trained cellist with a tremendous sense of vision […] a gorgeously graceful piece of synthy art-pop”
“Coming-of-age-movie-ready, with a soaring, synth-buoyed hook and a head pounding drum machine beat […] Kelsey Lu started her new era with a soaring new single, Running To Pain”
So Help Me God LP
June 12 via Dirty Hit
PRE-ORDER / PRE-SAVE HERE
TRACKLIST
Reaper
Portrait Of A Lady on Fire
What Can I Do
Running To Pain
Comfort
American Sonnet
852
Only The Lonely
Better Than That
Cutting Off The Head Of A Ghost
‘Portrait Of A Lady On Fire’ is out now, buy/stream here.
Today, Kelsey Lu shares ‘Portrait Of A Lady On Fire’, the second single from their long-awaited new album So Help Me God, out June 12th via Dirty Hit. LISTEN HERE + PRE-SAVE THE LP HERE.
Arriving alongside a new visual, the track deepens the world first introduced with ‘Running To Pain’, intimate, devotional, and quietly explosive. Where the first single leaned into tension and release, ‘Portrait Of A Lady On Fire’ burns slower, built on longing, restraint, and emotional clarity.
Taken from a ten-track album co-produced with Jack Antonoff and Yves Rothman, So Help Me God marks Lu’s return seven years after their debut Blood. It’s a record shaped by transformation where devotion, desire, grief, and transcendence collapse into one another.
Visually, the project continues to unfold as a wider cinematic work. The video for ‘Portrait Of A Lady On Fire’ builds on Lu’s ongoing collaboration with BAFTA-winning director Savanah Leaf, forming part of a larger visual language surrounding the album, one that moves fluidly between film, performance and music.
Alongside the album release, Lu will bring So Help Me God into the physical space through a series of intimate live moments. This April, they’ll perform a run of shows at Blue Note in New York and Los Angeles, a rare opportunity to experience the new material up close.
Lu will also present a new large-scale performance work titled PENUMBRA on the 7th May at PalazzoDiedo in Venice, commissioned by Olivier Berggruen and Monteverde Productions. Conceived as an immersive extension of the album, the piece blurs the boundaries between concert, installation, and ritual, inviting audiences into a shared environment shaped by sound, movement, and presence.
Across music, film, and performance, So Help Me God signals a new chapter for Lu, one that feels more expansive, more physical, and more uncompromising in its vision.
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