Shamir Announces Release Date For Final Solo Album Ten Out May 19 Via Kill Rock Stars 

“Recording 291” New Single & Video Out Now

In-Store Performances:

May 15: Repo Records (Philadelphia) 

May 19: Rough Trade (New York City) 

"Shamir’s falsetto is simultaneously piercing and doleful” - New York Times

"Unwavering skill at song-craft" - Billboard

“Always prolific” - SPIN

Wednesday, April 16 - Shapeshifting Philadelphia-via-Vegas artist Shamir has announced the release date for his final solo album Ten, out digitally May 19 via Kill Rock Stars, on the 10 year anniversary of his debut album Ratchet (with an early physical release on May 16). The project is a love letter to friends who shaped Shamir’s life - 10 songs written by those closest to him, unused demos and castaways given a new life. Cranberries-esque fever dream of longing “Recording 291” is out now, a song written by Paige Pfleger who also stars alongside Shamir in the video directed by J.D. Biskner, shot on film using a vintage super 8 camera. 

To celebrate this final solo release, Shamir has also announced two in-store performances - May 15 at Repo Records in Philadelphia and May 19 at Rough Trade in New York City.

“Recording 291”: Watch / Listen

Ten: Pre-Order

The album, produced by Allen Tate of San Fermin, is built from live instrumentation, a departure from the digital pastiche of earlier Shamir records, more polished than some of Shamir’s lofi rock. Previous single “Neverwannago” is accompanied on the album by “I Know We Can’t Be Friends” (Grant Pavol), “29” (Sizzy Rocket) and opening track “I Love My Friends” (Andrew Harmon), serving as a mission statement. It is a song Harmon originally wrote after the death of his father, and yet, in Shamir’s hands, it feels eerily tailored to his own arc—one of the album’s many moments where someone else’s words seem to unlock something deeply personal. 

Ten finds Shamir in yet another mode: a conduit rather than a confessor, an interpreter rather than an architect. With his HBIC (Head Bunny in Charge) Leche on the cover, the communal and personal epilogue binds together disparate narratives with Shamir’s singular voice, ragged and divine.

Performing and collaborating with everyone from Le Tigre and Courtney Barnett to Troye Sivan, Rina Sawayama and Mac DeMarco, Shamir’s career has been one of constant evolution - from the dancefloor irreverence of 2015’s Ratchet on XL Recordings to the lo-fi catharsis of his self-titled 2020 album. Heterosexualityfollowed in 2022, a searingly confessional record that wove together industrial flourishes and razor-edged vulnerability.

Over the past decade, Shamir has navigated a music industry that has never quite known what to do with him — fluctuating success, industry indifference, and, at times, outright hostility. Ten is, in contrast, an exercise in love. It is a reclamation of music as a shared language, rather than a performance of self.

If there is any lingering question about whether this truly marks the end of Shamir as a solo entity, he leaves little room for ambiguity. “I’ve done and said all I wanted to say,” he states plainly. “I never want to feel like I’m forcing my art.” He has spent the last ten years running through the storm, and now, surveying the wreckage, he has chosen to walk away.

Ten is not the sound of an artist burning out. It is the sound of an artist setting himself free.

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For more information please contact Shore Fire Media:

Rebecca Shapiro (rshapiro@shorefire.com) 

Shannon Cosgrove (scosgrove@shorefire.com) 

Luci Paczkowski (lpaczkowski@shorefire.com)