Kelsey Lu shares new single ‘Portrait Of A Lady on Fire’ from her forthcoming album So Help Me God out June 12th
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”
LP 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
‘Better Than That’ is out now, buy/stream it here.
Kelsey Lu today releases ‘Better Than That’ featuring Sampha – the third single from their long-awaited new album So Help Me God, out 12th June via Dirty Hit. LISTEN HERE + PRE-SAVE THE LP HERE.
The track draws deeper into the otherworldly terrain Kelsey Lu first carved out with ‘Running To Pain‘ and ‘So Help Me God’ – music that is at once intimate and devotional, delicate yet quietly detonating beneath the surface. Here, Lu’s vocals are transfixing, soft and sensual, they drift like smoke over a crystalline piano arrangement that leaves just enough space to breathe.
Woven through it all is Sampha’s signature lilt – tender and unhurried – curling around Lu’s own voice in a moment of rare, unhurried communion between two singular artists, before the beat opens up beneath them and the track exhales into its breathtaking final stretch.
WATCH: ‘Better Than That’ (Official Visualiser)
Taken from Lu’s ten-track album, co-produced with Jack Antonoff and Yves Rothman, So Help Me God marks their return seven years after debut Blood. The new record is shaped by transformation where devotion, desire, grief and transcendence collapse into one another.
A creative partnership with BAFTA-winning director Savanah Leaf extends the album’s world beyond sound alone – weaving together film, performance and music into a single, seamless visual language. You can watch the music video for ‘Running To Pain’ HERE.
Lu closed out an 8-show Blue Note residency across LA and NY this weekend, debuting So Help Me God live for the first time. Lu will also present a new large-scale performance work titled ‘PENUMBRA’ on the 7th May at Palazzo Diedo 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.
Spanning music, film and performance, So Help Me God marks a bold new chapter for Kelsey Lu – one that feels wider in scope, more visceral in presence, and utterly uncompromising in its vision.
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