Synth-pop duo Hurts have officially launched their new single Voices, the first release of new material since their 2017 album Desire and their first major reappearance on the music scene since the culmination of their world tour in 2018. Following weeks of ambiguous video and photo uploads on social media, the new track has finally emerged from a cloud of mystery befitting what frontman Theo Hutchman says of the duo’s unique style: “we enjoy […] not being able to be pigeon-holed and for people to be able to second-guess.”
Speaking to NME, Hutchcraft assures fans that more music would be made available by the Manchester duo in the months to come, with future releases keeping in tune with “introspection and soul-searching” that informed much of Voices‘s conception.
Considering the new single “a strange and paranoid pop song,” Hutchcraft says Voices examines the capacity of the mind as “both a force for good and a force for evil. A lot of our music is very emotionally raw but there are depths we’ve yet to mine. ‘Voices’ is probably as raw as a sentiment gets for me. It’s something I never really felt able to write about for a while. I hope people see that and it brings them closer to who we are.”
With further news relating to the release of Hurts’s fifth album expected to be sprinkled across their social media platforms in the coming months, fans can continue enjoying the duo’s active YouTube channel, where their music videos regularly achieve over 5m views. The primary hub of promotion for all recent material can be found on Hutchman’s Instagram account, @theohurts, where the majority of their mysterious, often captionless, black-and-white portraits have been dropped in the run-up to today’s latest drop.
One image sees Hutchman blindfolded, which he explained in the above interview with NME: “I started to use blind therapy, where you […] deprive yourself of sight for certain periods of time to stimulate your other senses. You have to live as blind. It opens up your mind’s eye and you get a little more creative.”
Sharpening your senses in lockdown can’t be a bad way of passing the time, I guess.
