L.A. quartet Warpaint shares the video for their latest single, “Champion,” today is taken from Radiate Like This, their first full length in six years, out May 6—pre-save/pre-order here.

“Being apart it was a little tricky to make a video,” Jenny Lee Lindberg says. “Tt came up w some key points with camera and angles, so we had some cohesion. The motivation was to feel like a champ and deliver the goods and let your honey flag shine.”

In the six years since 2016’s much-lauded Heads Up, Warpaints four members—Emily Kokal, Jenny Lee Lindberg, Stella Mozgawa, and Theresa Wayman—have been busy living. Babies, jobs, tours, solo albums, intercontinental and cross country moves all became priorities, presenting mounting logistical challenges to getting the band back together, as they say, and allowing a little space to think “what if we didn’t?”

Eventually, though, each of the women found themselves drawn inexorably back together. Warpaint is as much a home for them as a band, having been together for nearly 20 years. They had just completed the foundational tracking sessions with co-producer Sam Petts-Davies (Thom Yorke, Frank Ocean, Skullcrusher) when the pandemic hit and they were forced to retreat to respective safety.

What followed was the making of a wholly different Warpaint album. Physically separated by the pandemic, each musician recorded her parts separately—often in makeshift home studios—before sending on to the next, creating songs layer by layer. Deciding to delay the release until they could tour allowed them to further hone each track, spending more time building and rebuilding than they had in the past. The result is a body of work that is sharper and more focused than any of their previous, each song as tight, beguiling, and proud as a diamond.

“I was saying the other day that we should’ve called this album “Exquisite Corpse”, but it was already taken,” jokes Kokal, referring to the title of the band’s debut EP. Radiate Like This captures what’s always been the magic of Warpaint—the delicate interplay of four separate parts coalescing in motion—while somehow allowing each individual to shine a little brighter.

The band will make their live return with a run of shows in the U.K. and Europe this spring with global dates to follow. See full tour routing below.

WARPAINT LIVE

May 9                                                            La Cigale                                                 Paris, France

May 11                                                       O2 Academy                             Bristol, United Kingdom

May 12                                               Albert Hall, Manchester                                 United Kingdom

May 13                                                  SWG3 Galvanisers                    Glasgow, United Kingdom

May 14                                                    National Stadium                                        Dublin, Ireland

May 17                                                  De La Warr Pavilion                       Bexhill, United Kingdom

May 18                                                    The Roundhouse                        London, United Kingdom

May 20                                                           Huxleys                                             Berlin, Germany

May 21                                                      Live Music Hall                                   Cologne, Germany

May 22                                                             Fabrik                                         Hamburg, Germany

May 24                                                           Paradiso                              Amsterdam, Netherlands

May 26                                                   Ancienne Belgique                                 Brussels, Belgium

May 28                                                          Progresja                                           Warsaw, Poland

June 1                                            Zorlu Performing Arts Center                             Istanbul, Turkey

June 3                                                     Primavera Sound                                    Barcelona, Spain