Lykke Li has shared the latest taste of her upcoming album ‘The Afterparty’ in the form of the single ‘Knife In The Heart’ – check it out below.
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The upcoming sixth album is set to arrive May 8 via Neon Gold Records/Futures – and you can visit here to pre-order the record. So far, she’s previewed the record with the maximalist pop track ‘Lucky Again’, and now she’s followed it up with ‘Knife In The Heart’.
Featuring a droning EBow, intense orchestration, and an anthemic chant chorus, the track sees Lykke Li contrast introspective lyricism against joyful sonic moments.
Speaking about the track, she said: “This is my brutalist nursery rhyme anthem — the emo girl in me, fully unleashed.
“I had my son and his friend sing the choruses because the juxtaposition of their voices against the EBow just created such a powerful sonic landscape, somewhere I’ve never really been before,” she added.
“A world totally collapsing in front of us and all we really have left is our humanity. My dream is to hear a whole football stadium chanting: ‘This Life This Life is a Knife in the Heart.’ To me, a pretty accurate description of what it feels like to be alive right now.”
The record comes as the long-awaited follow-up to 2022’s ‘EYEYE’, and is set to tackle heavier themes than ever before. These will see the singer lean away from romantic fantasy, and instead confront the motif of mortality, hedonism, and impermanence.
The cover for the record sees Li’s face warped by translucent tights, and she explained: “I find that we’re in an era where everyone is talking about ‘My higher self’, Fuck that. This is an album dealing with your lower self: your need for revenge, your shame, despair.”
See the new cover and a tracklist, below.
The ‘Afterparty’ tracklist is:
‘Not Gon Cry’
‘Happy Now’
Lucky Again’
‘Famous Last Words’
‘Future Fear’
‘So Happy I Could Die’
‘Sick Of Love’
‘Knife In The Heart’
‘Euphoria’
‘EYEYE’, was given a four-star review from NME and praised as a “record that breathes, sighs and will leave you lost in the same dazed reverie that these tracks were born from.”
Since sharing it, Li has gone on to share the anthemic standalone single ‘Midnight Shining’, put her own spin on Johnny Cash’s ‘Ring of Fire’, and co-written the Miley Cyrus song ‘Beautiful That Way’, which was recorded for the 2025 Pamela Anderson film, The Last Showgirl.
She also shared a reimagined version of her track ‘Highway to Your Heart’ from ‘EYEYE’, titled ‘TЯAƎH ЯUOY OT YAWHӘIH’, and spoke to NME about how her outlook on the world was shaping her approach to new material.
As for 2026, this summer will see the artist join The Last Dinner Party, and more in supporting Wolf Alice at their biggest headline concert to date at London’s Finsbury Park.
The post Lykke Li shares new single ‘Knife In The Heart’: “This is my brutalist nursery rhyme anthem — the emo girl in me, fully unleashed” appeared first on NME.