Esteemed Portland, Oregon-based artist Laura Veirs has announced that her new album, Temple Songs, will come out on 14th August via her label Raven Marching Band Records. Veirs has also shared her lead single Flying Into Darkness alongside a video she filmed while on tour in France, which you can see at the bottom of this article. Veirs has also announced a major UK Tour for later in the year. The album is available to pre-order here.
Veirs explains about the single. “This song comes from a feeling of being existentially unmoored in a dark, uncertain moment. I kept circling the same questions: how do I stay grounded? How do I feel like I’m doing some real good, nudging things–even slightly–in a better direction? At its core, the song wrestles with restlessness–how hard it is to find true rest when the world keeps us in a constant state of unease. There’s also a thread of ‘No Masters’ running through it, which shows up across the album. I’m reaching for a world shaped more by freedom and love than by greed and fear, and all the ways those forces show up in daily life: hollow work, vast inequality, systems that feel too big to push against, and the steady backdrop of violence and conflict.”
Since the 2022 release of her last studio album, Found Light, Veirs has kept her days full: building a backyard studio, getting married, blending a family with four teenagers, deepening her visual art practice, and expanding her music teaching. “I didn’t know if I would write songs again,” she says. “Turns out that period was a gathering phase. When I made the commitment to recording the album myself, the muse caught me again, and it came together very quickly.” Written and recorded over three months in the fall of 2025 in Veirs’ backyard ‘Temple of Bloom’ studio, her 14th solo LP marks a new level of artistic independence for her. It is the first album Veirs has written, recorded, arranged, produced, and performed entirely on her own. She plays guitars, bass, drums, tambourine, percussion, and sings vocals; the only outside contribution is saxophone by a secret special guest. She used no click tracks and no electronic instruments, extraordinary in this day and age, folks!
“I wanted to make something that sounds as organic and human as possible,” she says. Mixing was by Philip Weinrobe (Adrienne Lenker), who added the finishing touches.
Veirs’ influences range from Mac DeMarco’s commitment to trusting his personal taste to the anarchists and feminists of the late 1800s and their rallying cry, “no gods, no masters.” “I needed to make this album to connect more deeply with my taste, aesthetics, and confidence. I wrestled with a lot of doubt,” Veirs says. “But there were many happy accidents, and eventually I found a flow—seeing the studio again, for the first time since my 20s, as a private place for exploration.”
“Temple Songs” tracklisting:
1. Arc Still Bends
2. Golden Seams
3. Pulse
4. Feeling Returns
5. Flying Into Darkness
6. Colors Sing
7. Out From Undercover
8. New Life Over There
9. No Masters
10. River’s Song
11. Sunlight and Doom
Laura Veirs 2026 UK & Ireland Tour supported by Karl Blau:
10th September – Cambridge, UK @ Storey’s Field Centre
11th September – Sheffield, UK @ Upper Chapel
12th September – Newcastle, UK @ Cluny 2
13th September – Glasgow, UK @ Saint Luke’s
14th September – Manchester, UK @ St. Michael’s
16th September – London, UK @ Earth
17th September – Southampton, UK @ Papillon
18th September – Bristol, UK @ Strange Brew
19th September – Birmingham, UK @ Kitchen Garden Café *(SOLD OUT!)*
20th September – Nottingham, UK @ Old Cold Store
22nd September – Galway, IE @ Monroe’s
23rd September – Dublin, IE @ Whelan’s
24th September – Belfast, UK @ The Black Box
25th September – Kilkenny, IE @ Cleere’s
