Fontaines D.C. announce new album ‘Dopamine Chamber,’ share ‘Marianne,’ sang with Kurt Vile

Fontaines D.C. have announced their fifth album, Dopamine Chamber, due October 16 via XL Recordings. They reunited with producer James Ford, who also produced its 2024 predecessor, the Grammy-nominated Romance, which we called their best album yet in Bill’s review on release day, and which we went on to name the 6th best album of that year.

They made the album between London, the English countryside and Palermo, where Grian Chatten recorded vocals in a makeshift booth built from mattresses and cushions. He also spent time in Venice, Vienna and Sicily looking for lyrical inspiration. Dopamine Chamber is available on LP, deluxe LP, CD, cassette and digital, and you can preorder it from the BrooklynVegan shop.

The announcement follows Fontaines D.C.’s recent return to the stage for their first shows in nearly a year. They played a BBC session at Maida Vale on July 31 before returning to regular live shows in Spain earlier this month, where they began debuting new material, including “Marianne.”

They’ve now shared “Marianne” as the album’s lead single. The song was partly inspired by the 2024 series Ripley, and deals with escapism and hedonism.

For Dopamine Chamber, Fontaines D.C. brought synthesizers, samples, triggers, marching drums and strings influenced by 1960s Italian pop into the mix, and several songs don’t feature guitars at all. “I was trying to find stuff that pointed into the future,” guitarist Conor Curley says.

“The album itself is a dopamine chamber,” Grian says. “You step inside and we test these different mind- or mood-altering pieces of music on you.”

Grian also says:

“I think Romance was maybe 60 per cent human and 40 per cent corrupted by automation, and a loss of feeling. This one feels more like 60 per cent corrupted — the mask is wearing the face a little more. I felt it would be more powerful to leave the hope out and reflect the ugliness honestly. This one needed to feel more like a catastrophic warning.”

Bassist Conor Deegan adds:

“Our albums have always questioned a sense of place. First Dublin, then being away from Dublin, and then trying to find the romance elsewhere. On this record, the question became: where do you escape to?”

Fontaines D.C. headlined La Route du Rock in France on Saturday (8/15), where they brought out special guest Kurt Vile to join them for “Roman Holiday.” This was especially cool because Grian cited Vile as an inspiration for the Skinty Fia song in a 2022 Rolling Stone UK interview, saying:

“It’s easy listening first, through songs like ‘Roman Holiday.’ I’d say that song was quite inspired by Kurt Vile; I saw him play in Croatia two years ago when we were playing there and I envied him. The sun was going down and he was able to stand there and chill out. We spend ten minutes before going on stage slapping each other in the face! I envy someone who can send a text to his kid, go off on stage and then just play really well.”

Watch Fontaines D.C. and Vile play “Roman Holiday” together below.

Fontaines D.C. have been busy elsewhere, too. They released “It’s Amazing To Be Young” as a standalone single in 2025, before including it as one of the few bonus tracks on the deluxe edition of Romance. This year, they covered Sinéad O’Connor’s “Black Boys on Mopeds” for War Child’s HELP(2) benefit compilation. Grian also teamed with Damon Albarn and Kae Tempest for the album’s “Flags.”

Kurt Vile, meanwhile, released his 10th album, Philadelphia’s been good to me, in May (get it on vinyl in the BV shop).

Fontaines D.C. are currently back on the road, with Reading, Leeds and Electric Picnic coming up later this month. They return to the US in September for Shaky Knees in Atlanta, Sea.Hear.Now in Asbury Park and Ohana Festival in Dana Point. All currently announced dates are below.

Fontaines DC — 2026 Tour Dates
August 18 – Les Docks, Lausanne, Switzerland
August 20 – FM4 Frequency, Sankt Polten, Austria
August 28 – Reading Festival, UK
August 29 – Leeds Festival, UK
August 30 – Electric Picnic, Ireland
September 18 – Shaky Knees, Atlanta, GA
September 20 – Sea.Hear.Now, Asbury Park, NJ
September 27 – Ohana Festival, Dana Point, CA