BLOOD ORANGE RELEASES ESSEX HONEY
Blood Orange Releases
Essex Honey
via RCA Records
Shares Self-Directed Music Video for New Track “Countryside”
Press Photo, credit: Vinca Petersen — download HERE
“Dev Hynes is also batting 1.000 on his own studio albums, assembling what might be the most underrated run of solo material by any artist this century”
-Paste Magazine
“one of the most sought-after producers in modern pop music”
-Billboard
“It [Essex Honey] might be the most overwhelmingly gorgeous album we’ll get all year.”
-Stereogum
“grief marshalling a unique talent into music that’s desperately sad, but beautiful, a particularly resonant broadcast from Blood Orange’s irregular world.”
-The Guardian (5 stars)
“During the years of grieving and processing that followed, Hynes crafted his newest album, Essex Honey, the most explicitly personal work of his career thus far.”
-GQ
[August, 29, 2025] — Today, Blood Orange – aka Dev Hynes – shares his first album in over six years, Essex Honey via RCA Records. He also debuts a self-directed music video for “Countryside” ft. Eva Tolkin, Liam Benzvi, and Ian Isiah. Written, produced, and recorded by Hynes, Essex Honey is a soundtrack created from a dreamscape of his journey working through grief. It is also an album about growing up in Essex (outside London) and the way music has inspired, healed, and interwoven itself through Hynes’ life.
Like all Blood Orange albums, Essex Honey comes with an incredible list of collaborators, some who have created with Hynes multiple times, and others who are new to his sonic fold. These include Lorde, Caroline Polachek, Daniel Caesar, Mustafa, Turnstile’s Brendan Yates, Tariq Al-Sabir, author Zadie Smith – singing on an album for the first time – Ian Isiah, Tirzah, Eva Tolkin, The Durutti Column, Wet’s Kelly Zutrau, Naomi Scott, Amandala Stenberg, and Liam Benzvi.
STREAM ‘ESSEX HONEY’ HERE
WATCH THE “COUNTRYSIDE” MUSIC VIDEO HERE
Essex Honey is everything Hynes does best and then some. Lyrically, he taps into the experiences of himself and his close friends, creating a love letter to his musical inspirations, including himself, wrapped in honesty. Close listens reveal refrains from some of Hynes’ influences growing up, including Elliott Smith, The Replacements, and more, allowing Hynes to lean backwards to his comfort listens while moving his own sound forward. Essex Honey is an album tinted with grief and loss, working towards acceptance and resolution, at a time when the culture is collectively feeling grief and loss, collectively trying to work towards resolution and acceptance. It is a beautiful swirl, an elegantly crafted pastiche of melodies and sounds, assembled in the way only Hynes knows how, crafting an intimate, scintillating whole and one of the best albums of 2025.
This fall, Blood Orange goes on the road to share Essex Honey with the masses, with headline dates, major festivals, and opening slots for Turnstile and Lorde for select shows on their respective tours. See below for full tour routing and visit his website HERE for more information.
Essex Honey artwork, credit: Johny Pitts — download HERE
Blood Orange tour dates:
Sat Sep 20 – San Francisco – Midway DJ Set – Freakquencies
Sun Sep 21 – San Francisco – Portola Music Festival
Tue Sep 23 – Columbus – KEMBA LIVE! w/ Turnstile
Wed Sep 24 – Richmond – Brown’s Island w/ Turnstile
Fri Sep 26 – Boston – TD Garden w/ Lorde
Sat Sep 27 – Montreal – Bell Centre w/ Lorde
Tue Sep 30 – Philadelphia – Wells Fargo Center w/ Lorde
Tue Oct 14 – Morrison – Red Rocks Amphitheatre w/ Lorde
Thu Oct 16 – Los Angeles – Shrine Auditorium and Expo Hall
Fri Oct 17 – Las Vegas – MGM Grand Garden w/ Lorde
Sat Oct 18 – Inglewood – Kia Forum w/ Lorde
Wed Oct 29 – Berlin, Germany – Columbiahalle
Fri Oct 31 – Torino – C2C Festival @ Lingotto Fiere Torino
Mon Nov 3 – Paris – Pitchfork Festival @ L’Olympia
Tue Nov 4 – Utrecht, Netherlands – TivoliVredenburg
Fri Nov 7 – London, UK – Alexandra Palace Theater
Sat Nov 8 – London, UK – Alexandra Palace Theatre
Sun Nov 9 – London, UK – Alexandra Palace Theatre
Mon Nov 10 – London, UK – Alexandra Palace Theatre
Thu Nov 13 – Bristol, UK – Electric Bristol
Sat Nov 15 – Manchester – AO Arena w/ Lorde
Wed Nov 19 – Toronto, ON – History
Thu Nov 20 – Toronto, ON – History
Sat Nov 29 – Brooklyn, NY – Brooklyn Steel
Sun Nov 30 – Brooklyn, NY – Brooklyn Steel
Tue Dec 2 – Brooklyn, NY – Brooklyn Steel
Wed Dec 3 – Brooklyn, NY – Brooklyn Steel
Thu Dec 4 – Brooklyn, NY – Brooklyn Steel
Fri Dec 5 -Brooklyn, NY – Brooklyn Steel
There are very few artists that have contributed to music in the way that Dev Hynes has done to date. The Grammy winning, multi-instrumentalist, singer/songwriter, producer, composer, has paved a path unlike any other artist since he started out over two decades ago, beginning with his nascent punk roots in Test Icicles in the early 2000’s to having a song – “Champagne Coast” – go gold in 2024 courtesy of TikTok. Indeed, it’s tough to imagine any other artist who has been nominated for a Grammy in a Classical category while winning a Latin Grammy – “Best Alternative Song” with Nathy Peluso – while ALSO releasing albums in neither genre: Blood Orange is firmly rooted in future nostalgic, leftfield pop/R&B.
Hynes’ influence continues to reverberate throughout culture. Since 2012, he has been an in-demand producer for everyone from Mariah Carey and A$AP Rocky to Carly Rae Jepsen and Lorde. In 2022, Hynes opened 15 shows at Madison Square Garden for the one and only Harry Styles, in addition to music directing Styles’ Grammy performance of “Watermelon Sugar” (in which he also played bass). He has spent the last three years selling out shows internationally performing his own classical compositions in London, Sydney, Toronto, and more, while also scoring things like Luca Guadagnino’s HBO show We Are Who We Are, Rebecca Hall’s Passing, Paul Schrader’s Master Gardener and shows for acclaimed fashion house Marni twice a season.
Dev Hynes