Kim Gordon announces third solo album, PLAY ME

Former Sonic Youth member Kim Gordon first made her solo debut in 2019 with No Home Record, which was then followed by The Collective, released in 2024. PLAY ME sees Gordon take on a krautrock-inspired direction, with new track "NOT TODAY" being the first preview of the new sound, which unlocked a new voice for Gordon, as she explains: “I started singing in a way I hadn’t sung in a long time. This other voice came out.”

Speaking of the record, and her collaboration with producer Justin Raisen (Charli XCX, Sky Ferreira, Yves Tumor), she continues: “We wanted the songs to be short. We wanted to do it really fast. It’s more focused, and maybe more confident. I always kind of work off of rhythms, and I knew I wanted it to be even more beat-oriented than the last one. Justin really gets my voice and my lyrics and he understands how I work—that came forth even more on this record.”

Many of the songs on PLAY ME were inspired by events that Gordon was seeing on the news, as she notes. "We are in some kind of ‘post empire’ now, where people just disappear." Exploring the impact of AI and a growing "convenience culture", she adds: “I was kind of musing about, is my next boss going to be an AI chatbot? We’re the first ones whose lights are going to go out—not the tech billionaires. It’s so abstract that people can’t comprehend.

"It’s sort of part and parcel of the convenience culture that we live in, where our choices are kind of curated all the time. Things are branded in a way that tries to predict what your mood is before you have a mood. I find that interesting, and also really offensive.”

PLAY ME tracklist

"PLAY ME"
"GIRL WITH A LOOK"
"NO HANDS"
"BLACK OUT"
"DIRTY TECH"
"NOT TODAY"
"BUSY BEE"
"SQUARE JAW"
"SUBCON"
"POST EMPIRE"
"NAIL BITER"
"BYEBYE25!"