Lorde Is Teasing Something Called “Solar Power”

New Zealand pop singer/songwriter extraordinaire Lorde has been pushing the limits of her ravenous fanbase’s patience for quite a while now (the “did lorde release a new album today” Twitter account has been dishing out “free disappointment” daily since summer 2019), taking her time with the follow-up to her 2017 sophomore album Melodrama. The record remains without a title or artwork, but is one of Paste’s most-anticipated of the year on speculation alone, and the artist born Ella Yelich-O’Connor has just given the internet something shiny and new to speculate about.

After the purported single art for a track called “Solar Power” leaked on Monday, Lorde’s team made it official and updated her website with the image in question: a photo seemingly depicting Yelich-O’Connor herself, brightly dressed and leaping through the air. They also added a brief note reading, “ARRIVING IN 2021 … PATIENCE IS A VIRTUE”—a gentle rebuke to overzealous fans, it would appear—and an email sign-up link. The image file is titled “Lorde_SolarPower_Cover_Final,” so safe to say it is indeed single artwork, if not album artwork.

This is the most substantial update we’ve received about Lorde’s LP3 since the Primavera Sound 2022 lineup was revealed in late May: Organizers let the cat out of the bag a bit in announcing that Lorde would headline the festival’s second weekend on June 10, 2022, noting that she would “emerge from her retirement with her third album after her unforgettable visit [to the festival] in 2018.” (The mention of her album was later edited out on the festival’s website.) Prior to that, we hadn’t heard much of note in over a year, since Lorde updated fans on her progress in May 2020, revealing that the album would “take a while longer” and teasing, “The work is so fucking good, my friend. I am truly jazzed for you to hear it.”

Stay tuned for further updates on “L3.”