Friendly Fires Announce Fourth Album 'Dig Deeper' and New Single

Friendly Fires have confirmed their fourth studio album, Dig Deeper, will be released on January 15 via LAB Records. The 11-track project marks the duo's first full-length release since 2019’s Inflorescent. Alongside the announcement, the band shared the new single "Magnetic," a track frontman Ed Macfarlane describes as an exploration of attraction that feels beyond control. In the song's chorus, Macfarlane sings about the difficulty of letting go when chemistry is "magnetic."

The upcoming album includes the previously released single "Lose All Your Friends," which arrived last month. Other confirmed song titles on the tracklist include "Leap Of Faith," "Gold Dust," "Orbital," and "Catherine Wheel." The announcement follows a trend of major British acts returning to the spotlight, similar to Oasis and their recently announced stadium tour. The indie-dance duo will support the announcement with an intimate live performance in London scheduled for next week.

The creative process for Dig Deeper followed a period of uncertainty for Macfarlane and bandmate Edd Gibson. Macfarlane revealed that the duo had "100 ideas that never saw the light of day" and several finished songs that were ultimately discarded because they did not feel right. The final record was written in a garage, a process the band described on social media as a "total labour of love and rediscovery" that allowed them to return to their roots and recapture what makes writing for the band exciting.

Thematically, the album tackles personal subjects, including the passing of two friends. Macfarlane shared that he and Gibson discussed the death of a friend from their youth for the first time during the making of the record, while another close friend of Macfarlane’s passed away during the recording sessions. Musically, the duo drew inspiration from their own archives and a lineage of sounds including Talking Heads, New Order, and late-’80s Balearic and baggy music.

A press release for the album describes the sound as a blend of "hypnotic dance grooves" and "cowbell workouts" paired with "serene falsetto." Gibson noted that the project was a conscious effort to recapture the essence of what the band was about in the first place. Macfarlane added that the band sees themselves as part of a specific musical continuum, embracing the mid-2000s "nu-rave" identity they first emerged from.