“Roses” is out now via Futures Music Group

Glaswegian band CHVRCHES, made up of Lauren Mayberry, Martin Doherty and Iain Cook, have returned with a biting new single, “Roses,” their first new music in three years. The single arrived September 22 following what Mayberry calls the longest break the band has ever taken between albums.

While the band’s Screen Violence era in 2021 had hints of rock, the album ran on electropop and synth-pop much like prior albums. “Roses” pushes that direction more deliberately. The synths drop to a thin background loop, while a chanted chorus rings through the song like a protest. The bridge brings in drum loops and light synths, but this is CHVRCHES going for a rock sound and doing so beautifully.

The chorus reworks the nursery rhyme “Ring a Ring o’ Roses” around God and king. The rest of the song takes on the darker side of modern Britain, the bridge goes straight at misogyny, and it all closes on an Orwellian announcement.

“When we got together to write new music, we wanted to really push ourselves and not be retreading ground we’d walked before,” Mayberry says.

The band will play two charity shows this fall, in their hometown of Glasgow on October 26 and in London on October 29, with tickets sold by ballot. “Roses” premiered as BBC Radio 1’s Hottest Record. Watch the video below and keep an eye out for CHVRCHES’ new era.