SKULLCRUSHER RELEASES NEW ALBUM ‘AND YOUR SONG IS LIKE A CIRCLE’ OUT NOW VIA DIRTY HIT

SKULLCRUSHER

RELEASES NEW ALBUM

OUT NOW VIA DIRTY HIT

LISTEN TO ‘MAELSTROM’

Early Praise for Skullcrusher

“On her intimate second album, And Your Song Is Like a Circle, the New York artist conjures a heavy sense of desolation by exploring life’s circular journeys, dreamlike states, and the imprints we leave behind… Electronic beats harmonise with skeletal, finger-picked guitar and austere piano to establish a contrast between human and machine, real versus synthesised.” – CRACK Magazine

“A stellar progression of her folkish core, Dirty Hit signee Skullcrusher sounds dazzling on “Exhale”. Built around walls of ethereal synths and stirring strings, the track is a gorgeous glimpse into the singer-songwriter’s newly announced October due album, And Your Song Is Like A Circle.” – Wonderland

“An apt point of introduction, it takes her gossamer-soft indie folk to new places.” – CLASH

“insanely beautiful” — NPR ‘Most Anticipated Fall 2025 Albums’

“Blending misty ambience with introspective folk songwriting..Ballentine wrings poignancy out of simple moments” — Pitchfork

“Ballentine’s skill as a songwriter is adding gravitas to the most conceptual of ideas or, as she does on the album’s meta first single “Exhale,” pull into focus the act of writing a song in the first place.” The FADER

“Magical..And Your Song Is Like A Circle is shaping up to be sublime” — Stereogum

“expansive, yet intimate” — PAPER Magazine

“Gorgeously gauzy alt folk paeans” —The Guardian

“heralds a new wave of the Skullcrusher sound: passionate, unabashed expression” —Paste

“Rarely does an artist arise with a sense of identity so fully composed, but Skullcrusher is clearly resolute in her vision”—The Line of Best Fit

Skullcrusher has released her highly anticipated album, And Your Song is Like a Circle, out now via her new label home Dirty Hit. Alongside the release, Helen Ballentine has announced the first Skullcrusher North Americanheadline tour in years, kicking off in March 2026 and wrapping in mid-April. Tickets on-sale HERE.

Recorded over a period of years following the release of her celebrated 2022 debut, Quiet the Room, And Your Song is Like a Circle does not capture experience – it gestures toward the imprint of an experience that is uncapturable. Swaying between elegant folk and crystalline electronics, landing somewhere in the snowfields shared by Grouper and Julia Holter, Circle probes the ways that grief turns itself inside out. Loss itself becomes as real and substantial as what’s been lost.

Ballentine began writing Circle after leaving Los Angeles, a city she’d called home for nearly a decade. She ended up returning upstate to New York’s Hudson Valley, where she was born and raised, leaving her chosen family to return to her blood family.

In a recent interview with PAPER Magazine, Ballentine opened up about her struggles with addiction during the making of Circle, experiencing major disassociation and loss before entering rehab in the Winter of 2024. Comparing that time to Edgar Allan Poe’s “Descent Into The Maelstrom,” she says “It almost felt like I was on the precipice of some kind of powerful force. If I went closer to it, I would never escape from it.”

Several years of intense isolation followed, and Ballentine immersed herself in films, books, and art that reflected the rupture of relocating cross-country and its dissociative aftershocks. If Skullcrusher’s first album rendered the detailed intimacies of domestic space, Circle finds itself vaporized across the landscape: swirling, drifting, searching. It skirts an event horizon in long, slow strokes.

Lead single ‘Exhale’ is built around gorgeous vocal filigrees that fan out into a haze of synthesizers and strings. Watch the video for ‘Exhale’ below, which was conceptualised by Ballentine in collaboration with director Adam Alonzo and shot in Upstate New York in and around her mother’s house. Opening track ‘March,’ is a stark piano reverie laced with flickering electronics and ambient layers. Watch an intimate, stripped back performance of the heartwrenching song HERE. Third single ‘Dragon’ is a gorgeous, murky pop song that lets piano echo over tight, gritted percussion, and the lush and harmony-laden ‘Living’ came accompanied by a live performance, watch HERE.

WATCH OFFICIAL VIDEOS FOR ‘EXHALE,’ ‘DRAGON,’

& LIVE PERFORMANCES OF ‘MARCH’ & ‘LIVING’

Tracklist:

01 March

02 Dragon

03 Living

04 Maelstrom

05 Changes

06 Periphery

07 Red Car

08 Exhale

09 Vessel

10 The Emptying

Lyrics came into shape while doing dishes. She painted her kitchen cabinets. The months grew long. One summer, a moth infestation across Hudson kept her from leaving her building. Moths swarmed outside, and crept into her apartment. She shooed them out of her bedroom for the night. When she woke up, they were all dead. She watched a lot of movies to fill the days. “I had a really visceral experience watching David Lynch’s Inland Empire for the first time,” she says. “At the climax, I literally fell out of my chair crying. I zoomed out and saw myself from above.”

At first, she wasn’t sure the music she was composing would cohere into an LP. While making the album, Ballentine focused deeply on the evaporative nature of creative work: the way ideas can appear and dissipate, leaving only faint traces behind, the way a voice courses through a fragile point in time, the way meaning can flicker and falter between people trying their best to understand each other. She recorded at home and in friends’ studios, working alongside apob (Dora Jar, Deb Never) in Los Angeles and co-producer Isaac Eiger (The Dare, Frost Children, Cassandra Jenkins, Malice K) in New York.

While recording, Ballentine experimented with new ways of capturing her voice, such as singing with contact microphones attached to her throat, “creating these really scary sounds.” Throughout the record, the line between human and machine blurs. “The voice is my favorite instrument because everybody has it,” she adds. “It’s related to so many different kinds of sounds: crying, screaming, laughing. And it’s ephemeral. It’s going to eventually die.”

She has also announced the first Skullcrusher North American headline tour in years, kicking off in March 2026 and wrapping in mid-April. Tickets on-sale HERE.

TOUR DATES

TICKETS

March 13th – Philadelphia, PA @ Johnny Brenda’s

March 14th – Washington DC @ Atlantis

March 16th – Carrboro, NC @ Cat’s Cradle Back Room

March 17th – Atlanta, GA @ The Earl

March 18th – Nashville, TN @ 3rd & Lindsley

March 20th – Austin, TX @ 29th St. Ballroom

March 21st – Dallas, TX @ Club Dada

March 25th – Los Angeles, CA @ Lodge Room

March 27th – San Francisco, CA @ Cafe du Nord

March 29th – Portland, OR @ Mississippi Studios