IDLES have been starting their recent live shows with a blistering new song, ‘Levitator’ – check it out below.
The Bristol punks dropped their last full album ‘Tangk’ back in 2024 and have yet to release any new material since then, barring the score for Darren Aronofsky’s crime thriller, Caught Stealing.
Last month, guitarist Mark Bowen revealed to NME that the band were well underway with writing their “most exciting” album yet, and hinted that they were looking to go “back to basics” for album six.
Now, since kicking off their summer tour dates, the band have shared the first taster of upcoming material – opening each show with brutal new song ‘Levitator’.
“It feels so good when I levitate/ When my body shakes all of its weight,” frontman Joe Talbot casually sings at the start of the track, backed by a simple, thumping guitar riff.
“All my shame turns to dust/ All her beauty to be loved without lust/ All my worries turn to rust,” he continues, building towards a thunderous climax that sees him call out “racist c***s”.
“Violence is majestic, coming from a righteous rage/ violence is majestic when you’re coming of age,” Talbot repeats at one part as the drums and guitar begin to amp up in intensity, leaning into a similar stripped-back, angsty sound like seen in debut album ‘Brutalism’.
IDLES first played ‘Levitator’ live when they performed at Estadio GNP Seguros in Mexico on May 27 and 28, and have since played it at festivals including at Northside in Denmark, Primavera, and Pinkpop.
It is not yet clear when the track will be released, but it seems likely that IDLES will play it live when they play at London’s Victoria Park on Sunday August 23 as part of Deftones’ day headlining All Points East x Outbreak. Other artists on that bill include Amyl & The Sniffers, Deafheaven and JPEGMAFIA, and you can find any remaining tickets here.
When Mark Bowen spoke to NME about the upcoming IDLES album last month, he said that they were looking to “record it this year” and expect to have it released in 2027.
“It is probably the most exciting IDLES album, just from a perspective of how excited we are about it,” he told us on the Ivor Novello red carpet.
“We got back in the studio to write, and we’ve kinda gone – I don’t want to say back to basics because that’s cliche – but it’s a bit back to basics!” he added. “It’s five members in a room thrashing it out on instruments. Lots of arguments, [which is great because] if it’s too nice, then it’s not sick. It’s always more sick if someone is not getting what they want!”
Bowen was at the 2026 Ivors as he was nominated alongside Florence Welch for Best Song Musically and Lyrically with the title track to Florence + The Machine’s latest album ‘Everybody Scream’.
Joe Talbot also spoke to NME about what fans can expect next from IDLES last summer, when he opened up about their huge 2025 Bristol homecoming gigs and how it felt like “the end of an era”.
“We’ve recorded a bunch of songs,” the frontman told us, adding that they were working on a “more driven” new album.
“We’ve got like 10 songs and we’re going to go back and do a bunch more. We’re doing some other projects in between, but we’re going to come back to the album later in the year and get it finished. We’re recording with Kenny [Beats] and Nigel [Godrich] again. It’s really magic, I can’t wait.”
Since then, the singer and his dad Nigel have launched an art exhibition called ‘Musoleum – Remembrance of Remembering’. Open until September, the gallery features various sculptures they each made, and is held at the Newport Museum and Art Gallery in South Wales.
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