L.S. Dunes Release New Single "Paper Tigers"
L.S. DUNES
RELEASE NEW SINGLE “PAPER TIGERS”
WATCH THE VISUALISER HERE
TAKEN FROM NEW ALBUM VIOLET
OUT 31ST JANUARY 2025 VIA FANTASY RECORDS
Rock band L.S. Dunes has today shared their new single “Paper Tigers”, out now via Fantasy Records. “Paper Tigers” marks the third track to be released from the band’s highly anticipated sophomore album, Violet, which will be out in full on 31st January , 2025. Stream the haunting new song now here, and watch the visualiser, created by Cedric Bixler-Zavala (The Mars Volta) here or by clicking the image below.
"I think when I initially started writing the chord progression for this song I was originally writing it for myself, because it didn’t feel like an L.S. Dunes song to me, and if it was an L.S. Dunes song, it would most certainly be a departure from what we had done in the past,” recalls Frank Iero. “And then I started to think well, that’s really silly of me, why wouldn’t Dunes be able to do something like this? If I want listeners to not put us in a box and believe we can do anything then I’m going to have to believe it first. So I reworked the progression a little bit and sent it over. Hearing it now, I can’t believe I ever doubted it. Paper Tigers was always an L.S. Dunes song. Together we can do anything."
Adds Tucker Rule: "This is the song I listen to most on our record. Yes, I listen to my own record because I think it’s that good. This song scratches all the itches… sludgy tempo, heavy ballad, mega riffs, soaring vocals and lots of space to play cool drums. This would be one of the songs I’d take to the deserted island with me. This is my favourite song on the record!"
On the new album Travis Stever shares, “‘Violet’ is a sonic journey into the depths of every band member of L.S. Dunes. The collaborative efforts to bring each song to a full potential came naturally. It’s the album that has always lived in us individually but could only be made together. It has melodies that have lived within me since I was a child. It was only with this band I would be able to find a place where they could find a home in song.”
Pre-orders for Violet are available now here.
L.S. Dunes recently performed at When We Were Young Festival in Las Vegas. The band have announced they will also be returning to the UK and Europe in early 2025 to support Rise Against. Full list of dates below.
Rise Against 2025 UK and EU tour dates
Tuesday January 28 - 3Olympia, Dublin, IE
Wednesday January 29 - Telegraph, Belfast, NI
Sunday February 2 - L'Olympia, Paris, FR
Tuesday February 4 - O13, Tillburg, NL
Wednesday February 5 - Forrest National, Brussels, BE
Thursday February 6 - O2 Brixton Academy, London, UK
Saturday February 8 - O2 Victoria Warehouse, Manchester, UK
Sunday February 9 - O2 Academy, Birmingham, UK
Wednesday February 12 - Velodrom, Berlin, DE
Friday February 14 - Mitsubishi Electric Hall, Düsseldorf, DE
Saturday February 15 - Sporthalle, Hamburg, DE
Monday February 17 - Zenith, Munich, DE
Tuesday February 18 – myticket Jahrhunderthalle, Frankfurt, DE
Friday, February 21 – Volkshaus, Zurich, CH
Saturday, February 22 – Stadthalle, Vienna, AT
Tickets on sale now
About L.S. Dunes:
The earliest version of L.S. Dunes—the one that introduced themselves to the world at Chicago’s Riot Fest in 2022 and went on to release their blissfully chaotic debut, Past Lives, later that year—was birthed in turbulence. There was a pandemic. There were time and family constraints. There were members away on tour with one of their many other bands: Anthony Green’s Saosin and Circa Survive, Frank Iero’s My Chemical Romance, Tim Payne and Tucker Rule’s Thursday, and Travis Stever’s Coheed and Cambria, among them. Somehow, they managed to make it work, releasing a few more singles along the way, and touring the globe for a growing and passionate cult-like fanbase. By and large, it was a successful first effort. But there were also some unforeseen consequences, and as the album cycle came to an end, there was at least one mistake that Green knew they needed to correct.
“I became so sick of playing the song where I sing, ‘Sorry that I wish that I was dead,’ and I am so sorry I even wrote that song,” he says of “Sleep Cult,” the closing track on their debut. “I’m grateful that people resonate with it, but it just wasn’t helpful for me to sing that every night or to talk about that. So this time, I personally decided that I really wanted to make a record that says there is magic in the world. I wanted to celebrate music and the transformative power that it has to connect and inspire people. I wanted to make something that was in complete opposition to that song—something that says, I want to live.” (Green)
By any measure, Violet—once again helmed by Grammy-nominated producer Will Yip—lives up to that promise, and in many ways, it opens up an opportunity to rediscover L.S. Dunes in a different light. Where Past Lives takes its oxygen from the thrill of frenzy and impulsiveness, Violet breathes deeper with a more open and expansive palette. Whether it lives in the confident and steady pulse of a song like “Machines,” in the rousing lyrical empowerment of “Paper Tigers,” or in the way that “Forgiveness” forges itself as an anthem for love and unconditional acceptance in the face of our personal failures, this is a body of work that secures multiple outcomes: There is hindsight. There is hope. There is, in fact, magic.
Perhaps no greater evidence of this exists but in the album’s name. Violet. A word that entered Iero’s subconscious while mumbling scratch lyrics to a new song he was writing, a word that became the working title for that song, and a word that survived demo after demo until it finally became the name of the album—despite not appearing anywhere in the final lyrics of the title track. “It just happened,” Iero insists. It appeared out of nowhere.
That’s the thing about magic: You need to suspend disbelief. You need to surrender to it. You need to stop asking for an explanation and simply embrace it when it comes.
Violet is out 31st January 2025 via Fantasy Records. Pre-orders for are available now here.
