The Veils Embrace Life on the New Album Called Fragile World
The Veils Embrace Life on the New Album Called Fragile World
June 19th, 2026
Arriving just over a year after their last release, Fragile World marks a striking shift in tone and energy for the band.
Recorded live to tape in New Zealand by Paddy Hill, with production by Tom Healy (Tiny Ruins, The Chills, Folk Bitch Trio), Fragile World captures The Veils in an urgent and instinctive mode.
Frontman Finn Andrews says: “I make each album, generally, as a kind of atonement for the last. Asphodels was so quiet and introspective, I think I just wanted to make something strident and full of life for a goddamn change.”
As can be heard on the first single ‘Lungs’ which has a yearning drive as Andrews sings: “I wish there was somewhere we could go / Somewhere my heart will not succumb / I want to hear it in my voice / I want to feel it in my lungs“.
The opening track ‘Aurora‘, with its very tasteful video directed by Alexander Gandar, was written as it was being recorded, inspired by a huge geomagnetic storm that raged over New Zealand that day while a song like ‘Little White Bird (Fragile World)‘ outlines the overall theme of the album as if Nina Simone and Arthur Russell are having a little dance.
Focus track ‘My Foolish Heart‘ contradicts that with a piano-based almost Country/Folk style. From lonely, fragile ballads via uplifting tracks to the first ever cover to appear on a Veils album (Sinéad O’Connor – ‘In This Heart’), Fragile World is Finn Andrews most diverse work yet – made with support from NZ On Air.
LISTEN TO FRAGILE WORLD HERE.
The album’s title is both a reflection of the present moment – a time in which many institutions appear to be crumbling before our eyes – and a metaphor for the act of creation itself. The process of making music, Andrews notes, is a delicate and fragile undertaking where thousands of small decisions gradually coalesce into a finished whole.
“We went into the studio with a lot of songs, but very little idea of the arrangements or instrumentation. It was truly exciting having no idea what this record would sound like and only a few weeks to figure it out. It’s mostly Tom and I playing everything, with Joseph McCallum coming in at times. It was all very instinctual, quite full-on, and scary at times – but a good kind of scary, not scary like the real world out there.”
With its immediacy, intensity, and emotional clarity, Fragile World stands as one of The Veils’ most compelling releases to date.
The Veils alongside Banished Music will also embark on a nationwide album tour, funded through NZ On Air and supported by the NZ Music Commission. The tour includes 7 band shows, featuring the closing show of Strange Universe: Winter in Auckland, and 4 solo performances.
Tickets on sale now from Banished Music.
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Since being signed to Rough Trade Records when lead singer Finn Andrews was just 16 years old, The Veils have now released eight studio albums: The Runaway Found (2004), Nux Vomica (2006), Sun Gangs (2009), Time Stays, We Go (2013), Total Depravity (2016), …And Out Of The Void Came Love (2023), Asphodels (2025) and Fragile World (2026).
The Veils have toured consistently throughout their over twenty-year history and garnered a formidable reputation as one of the world’s great live bands. As well as a fruitful collaboration with Run the Jewels’ El-P for their 2016 album Total Depravity, they have also been praised by film directors Paolo Sorrentino, Tim Burton and David Lynch, who have all used their music on their soundtracks.
The Veils made their glorious return to the stage in 2023/24 with sold out shows across Europe, North America & Australasia through 2023-2025. The band will begin touring significantly again in support of Fragile World through 2026.