Since releasing her debut album Blood in 2019, LA-based cellist and avant-pop artist/composer Kelsey Lu has kept a pretty low profile in the music world, popping up here and there as a collaborating artist with the likes of Yves Tumor, Debbie Harry, Florencde + the Machine, Jamie xx, and Mykki Blanco, and as a soundtrack composer (2024's Daughters and Earth Mama).

That all changes today with the release of new single "Running to Pain", the first taste of a new album, So Help Me God, coming June 12 via Dirty Hit. The video was filmed in Lanzarote with French actor Garance Marillier and BAFTA-winning director of Earth Mama, Savanah Leaf, and will form part of a larger cinematic project connected with the album. Watch it below:

Talking about the new album, which she co-produced with Jack Antonoff and Yves Rothman, Lu says in a press release:

“'So Help Me God' was built slowly and intentionally across seven years of transformation. Sonically and emotionally it holds so many different worlds at once – devotion and desire, collapse and becoming – trying to make sense of what it means to break, to believe, to long for something without seeing it clearly, and to be reborn again and again and again.”

Lu has also announced a small tour of intimate Blue Note shows. Find those dates below.

So Help Me God is out June 12. Pre-order here. Full tracklist:

1. Reaper
2. Portrait of a Lady on Fire
3. What Can I Do
4. Running To Pain
5. Comfort
6. American Sonnet
7. 8 52
8. Only The Lonely
9. Better Than That
10. Cutting Off The Head Of A Ghost

Live dates:

04/16 New York, NY @ Blue Note Jazz Club
04/17 New York, NY @ Blue Note Jazz Club
04/25 Los Angeles, CA @ Blue Note
04/26 Los Angeles, CA @ Blue Note

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