After much teasing, including a video trailer, tour dates, and a telephone hotline pointing to snippets of new music, The Avalanches have officially returned. Tonight, during an appearance on Zane Lowe’s Beats 1 show, the Melbourne natives debuted “Frankie Sinatra”, their first proper release in well over a decade. The track features Danny Brown and DOOM as well as a sample from The Sound of Music.

The accompanying video was directed by Fleur & Manu (Drake, A$AP Rocky, M83), and shot on location in the bayou of New Orleans, “drawing inspiration from southern swamp culture.” Watch the batshit crazy clip below.



“Frankie Sinatra” serves as the first preview of Wildflower, the long-awaited follow-up to 2000’s Since I Left You. The album will receive release on July 8th through Astralwerks.

In an interview with Lowe, band members Tony Di Blasi and Robbie Chater revealed that the new album features 21 tracks. Other guests include Father John Misty, Toro y Moi, Royal Trux’s Jennifer Herrima, Biz Markie, Mercury Rev’s Jonathan Donahue, and more. Jens Lekman, Connan Mockasin, and Empire of the Sun also recorded tracks for the album that failed to make the final tracklist.

Asked by Lowe why the album took so long to complete, the duo responded, “I think for us, we just kept making music, which we’d always done and probably always will do. There was so much of it, and so many different projects going on, that at a certain point we realized we had to pull a record together.”

The Avalanches also addressed the delay in a note posted to Facebook, writing, “Sorry we kept you waiting, it’s been a wild ride and at times we thought we would never make it. What kept us going was a belief in the day-day experience of music as a life force – as life energy.”

Elsewhere in the interview, they described the album’s inspirations as such: “This new record feels a bit like a road trip, and we spent a lot of our teenage years driving around in cars in the country and in suburbia listening to music, and that was in our heads making this record as well. For us this record was supposed to capture that feeling.”

“Frankie Sinatra” was the most challenging track to complete, with the pair working through over 100 mixes in a two-and-a-half year span.” The same can’t be said for several of the pair’s personal favorites, which failed to make the album, because “they didn’t fit the overall feeling of the record … Once we had the feeling right we just built upon it, selected tracks that fit it. It was kind of like making a mixtape.” However, these unreleased tracks could see release later this year in an archival box set.

Lastly, they said they hope to have another album out in the next three years, but seriously — don’t hold your breath.

Wildflower Artwork:

Wildflower Tracklist

01. The Leaves Were Falling

02. Because I’m Me

03. Frankie Sinatra

04. Subways

05. Going Home

06. If I Was a Folkstar

07. Colours

08. Zap!

09. The Noisy Eater

10. Wildflower

11. Harmony

12. Live a Lifetime Love

13. Park Music

14. Livin’ Underwater (Is Somethin’ Wild)

15. The Wozard of Iz

16. Over the Turnstiles

17. Sunshine

18. Light Up

19. Kaleidoscopic Lovers

20. Stepkids

21. Saturday Night Inside Out

22. Frankie Sinatra (Extended Mix)

Vinyl subscription service Vinyl Me Please will be released a limited-edition red vinyl of Wildflower.

COMING SOON to the VMP Member Store…. @TheAvalanches 'Wildflower' (VMP Exclusive, LTD to 2,000 on RED VINYL) pic.twitter.com/ZHpq5BSLAu — Vinyl Me, Please (@VinylMePlease) June 2, 2016

The Avalanches 2016 Tour Dates:

06/03 – Barcelona, ES @ Primavera Sound

06/09 – London, UK @ Oval Space

06/12 – London, UK @ Field Day

07/22-24 – Byron Bay, AU @ Splendour in the Grass