Sylvan Esso Trust Fall Into Dystopia On Ow ∞, First New Album In Four Years Out Today via Psychic Hotline

Full Band Tour Begins This Fall, Including The Return of Good Moon Festival & More Than 30 Dates Across North America

Ow ∞ Album Art by Eric Timothy Carlson

DURHAM, NC – September 11, 2026: Today, Sylvan Esso release Ow ∞: their first new album in four years, and first to be released on their own record label, Psychic Hotline. Named one of the buzziest projects The New York Times is looking forward to this fall, Ow ∞ is a trust fall into our dystopian present, past and future – arms wide open, embracing and absorbing the pain of cities under water or on fire, and piecing oneself back together as a tactile, scotch-taped collage of memories, ephemera, Y2K-era burned CDs and backseat makeouts. Produced by Sylvan Esso's Amelia Meath and Nick Sanborn, and bringing together 12 of their most collaborative, improvisational and experimental songs to date, Ow ∞ marks the longest the band has ever spent writing a record, but arrives with an intense immediacy that is messy, hellish and free, metabolizing a life of making music with people into making art that you just love.

Listen to Ow ∞ on vinyl, CD, cassette and digitally via Psychic Hotline – further illustrated through an immersive world of animated characters and iconography by artist Eric Timothy Carlson – and watch the new video for "Sledge," written in the shadow of Hurricane Helene and the Los Angeles fires, as it channels apocalyptic anxiety into a fierce affirmation of destruction, control and surrender.

Created, reimagined and revisited nearly every day since 2022, in the woods of their studio Betty's in Chapel Hill, NC, Ow ∞ is both a technicolor totem of personal destruction, and an ecstatic invitation to party. From highlights like "Hot Slob" to "Concrete Glen" and "On & On," most of the tracks on Ow ∞ are Meath's first vocal takes, while arrangements and ideas are excavated, painted over and held together by the largest community of musicians Sylvan Esso have ever worked with on an LP. Featuring six different drummers in total, as well as live guitar, bass, keys, vibraphone, woodwinds, Innato, organ, piano and electronics, Meath and Sanborn are joined by Daniel Aged (Frank Ocean, Dijon), BJ Burton (Bon Iver, Charli XCX), Matt Douglas (the Mountain Goats), Glenn Kotche (Wilco), Jake Luppen (Hippo Campus, Samia), TJ Maiani (Weyes Blood, Neneh Cherry), James Mapley-Brittle (GRRL), Buddy Ross(Frank Ocean, Bon Iver), Jenn Wasner (Wye Oak, Flock of Dimes) and Joe Westerlund(Megafaun) throughout the record, filling hard drives with 5-10 songs at a time, some sticking and some not.

But for an album that wrestles so much with the out-of-control nature of being alive, Ow ∞meets Meath and Sanborn at a time where, finally, they have complete control over what Sylvan Esso can be: putting things out the way they want to, with the people they choose, in their own studio and through their own label.

Following a cross-country Road Trip and global series of Hi-Fi Listening Parties earlier this month, Sylvan Esso will bring the music of Ow ∞ to a full-band tour spanning more than two dozen shows across North America and beyond in 2026 and 2027, in addition to return of their biennial Good Moon festival that takes over four venues throughout their hometown of Durham, NC, from October 8th-10th. See below for upcoming dates, with tickets and more information at sylvanesso.com.

Photo by Tonje Thilesen

Ow ∞ Tracklist

Entertainment & Coca-Cola

Flood Season

Hot Slob

Concrete Glen

Back Again

Ribbon

Sledge

Right to Left

Good at Pain

Jessica

On & On

Plastic Sword

Praise For Ow ∞

"Sweaty, snotty and hedonistically brash...[Hot Slob] is an infectious and defiant ode to living messily"

The New York Times

"Couldn't you live in the vibe of that song for the rest of your life? [Concrete Glen] is incredible...one of the best Sylvan Esso songs I've ever heard"

NPR Music

"It's maintaining the standard of excellence. 'On & On' is frenetic yet melancholy. It sounds like moving drowsily through a world that's buzzing along at an uncomfortably fast pace, but eventually finding synchronicity with your surroundings"

Stereogum

"Big, big happenings in the world of Sylvan Esso...an exciting shift in direction"

Consequence

"An eruption of buoyant experimentation, blending the organic and electronic with ecstatic melodies and avant-garde textures...both intensely experimental and also some of their most direct songwriting"

SPIN

"[Hot Slob] is a fittingly bratty, irreverent release to herald in the band's new independent era, their occasional glitchiness cranked up and gone analog"

Paste

Sylvan Esso Tour Dates

Sep 12 - Abiquiu, NM - Blossoms & Bones

Sept 20 - Brighton, UK - Resident Music (In-Store Performance)

Sept 21 - London, UK - Rough Trade (In-Store Performance, Matinee)

Sept 21 - London, UK - Rough Trade (In-Store Performance) SOLD OUT

Sept 24 - London, UK - Secret Location (DJ Set)

Oct 1 - Atlanta, GA - The Eastern

Oct 2 - Asheville, NC - The Orange Peel LOW TICKETS

Oct 3 - Asheville, NC - The Orange Peel SOLD OUT

Oct 5 - Washington, DC - 9:30 Club SOLD OUT

Oct 6 - Washington, DC - 9:30 Club LOW TICKETS

Oct 8-10 - Durham, NC - Good Moon LOW TICKETS

Oct 12 - Philadelphia, PA - Franklin Music Hall

Oct 14 - Brooklyn, NY - Brooklyn Paramount LOW TICKETS

Oct 15 - New Haven, CT - College Street Music Hall

Oct 16 - Portland, ME - State Theatre LOW TICKETS

Oct 17 - Boston, MA - Citizens House of Blues

Oct 19 - Toronto, ON - HISTORY

Oct 21 - Milwaukee, WI - Riverside Theater

Oct 22 - Chicago, IL - The Salt Shed Indoors

Oct 23 - Minneapolis, MN - First Avenue LOW TICKETS

Oct 24 - Minneapolis, MN - First Avenue LOW TICKETS

Oct 31-Nov 1 - Kakegawa, JP - Festival de Frue

Dec 5 - Memphis, TN - Raised by Sound Fest (DJ Set)

Feb 19 - Seattle, WA - Paramount Theatre

Feb 20 - Vancouver, BC - Vogue Theatre

Feb 22 - Portland, OR - McMenamins Crystal Ballroom LOW TICKETS

Feb 23 - Portland, OR - McMenamins Crystal Ballroom

Feb 25 - Oakland, CA - Fox Theater

Feb 26 - Los Angeles, CA - The Wiltern

Feb 27 - Santa Ana, CA - Observatory

Mar 1 - Del Mar, CA - The Sound

Mar 2 - Phoenix, AZ - The Van Buren

Mar 4 - Salt Lake City, UT - Rockwell at the Complex

Mar 5 - Denver, CO - Ogden Theatre LOW TICKETS

Mar 6 - Denver, CO - Ogden Theatre

Mar 8 - Austin, TX - ACL Live at The Moody Theater

Mar 9 - Dallas, TX - House of Blues

Mar 11 - New Orleans, LA - Tipitina's LOW TICKETS

Mar 12 - Birmingham, AL - Iron City

Mar 13 - Nashville, TN - Brooklyn Bowl

Follow Sylvan Esso

For more information, please contact Matt Hanks, Greg Jakubik or Annie Mickum at Shore Fire Media, 718-522-7171