Legendary musician, producer, and composer Haruomi Hosono signs to Ghostly International and announces a new album, Yours Sincerely due Sept 11th. Hosono’s work has shaped pop, indie, and electronic music and beyond globally for over five decades, predicting entire lanes of music before they existed. Frieze has proclaimed him as “probably the most significant artist in the history of Japanese popular music.” Now at the age of 78, Hosono is entering his next chapter with his 23rd studio album. PRE-ORDER HERE

Ever-pushing his inventive songcraft, Hosono shares, “I am now 78 years old, but from here on, I feel a growing curiosity toward the unknown music that my new self will create, while also embracing the music of my former self—as if I now carry two musical worlds within me.”

Yours Sincerely was shaped over two years. Hosono shares, “It started with a simple question: how do you express the Japanese ideas of omoiyari (思い遣り), jihi (慈悲), or boseiai (母性愛) in English? I searched, but no word felt quite right. Each came close, yet carried a slightly different nuance. Perhaps the nearest was ‘compassion.’ It is often translated as ‘omoiyari’ in Japanese, but its original meaning is ‘to suffer together.’ It tends to carry a sense of sympathy or pity—something that feels distinct from the Japanese sense of omoiyari. In Japanese, omoiyari also includes the feeling of ‘rejoicing together.’ In that sense, it may even seem like the opposite. The perspective, the emotional angle—subtly but fundamentally different. For that reason, I chose not to use ‘compassion.’ Instead, I turned to a more familiar word often used to close a letter: ‘Sincerely.’”

Across arrangements spanning tender, exploratory folk and bubbling avant-pop, Hosono contemplates a maternal force that envelops the Earth, “humanity’s understanding of the unconditional love possessed by those who give us life,” he says. Songs tap into a collective current, the “deeply buried instincts—maternal compassion and mercy, things we rarely engage with in our daily lives.

Shaped by mid-century American music, Hosono’s work now reverberates back through a new generation of Western artists—a remarkable circular exchange. Hosono has been cited by an acclaimed list of contemporary artists, including Mac DeMarco, Cameron Winter, Ginger Root, Vampire Weekend, and Harry Styles. Harry Styles named his chart-topping 2022 album Harry’s House directly after HOSONO HOUSE (1973), Mac DeMarco has called him his “hero,” and Vampire Weekend’s Ezra Koenig sampled his work on the Grammy-winning Father of the Bride.

A founding member of Happy End and Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO), Hosono helped establish Japanese-language rock in the 1970s and pioneered electronic music with YMO—whose 1979 albumSolid State Survivor topped the Japanese Album Chart, sold over two million copies, and became foundational to synth-pop, techno, and hip-hop.

Hosono is also announcing The Yours Sincerely Tour in North America this September, headlining Radio City Music Hall in NY and the Greek Theatre in LA as his first US shows in seven years. Toro y Moi will support both performances. Artist presale begins on Tuesday, May 26th, at 10am local time. To gain access, pre-order from ghostly.com. General on sale begins on Friday, May 29th, at 10am local time on livenation.com.