A Perfect Circle Return With “Starless” Ahead of European Tour

A Perfect Circle have returned with “Starless,” a new single from Maynard James Keenan and Billy Howerdel that arrives just before the band starts its first UK and European dates in eight years.

The song dropped Wednesday night, May 27, according to NME, and follows “Kindred,” the A Perfect Circle contribution to 2024’s Sessanta E.P.P.P. That context matters because some headlines have flattened this as the band’s first new music in eight years. It is not. The cleaner read is better anyway: A Perfect Circle are back with a proper standalone single, and it sounds built for the stage they are about to walk onto.

Blabbermouth reports that “Starless” was recorded at Howerdel’s Lankershim Ranch Studio in Studio City, California, written earlier this year, produced by Howerdel, mixed by Matty Green, and features longtime collaborator Josh Freese on drums. The track works the band’s familiar pressure points: Howerdel’s slow-burn architecture, Keenan moving from restraint to alarm, and a chorus that feels less like release than a controlled breach.

Keenan is already looking at the live version. “Absolutely chuffed to debut this new track on stage in the U.K.,” he said in the statement carried by NME and Blabbermouth. “Of course I’m excited to release the recordings but our songs always take on an expanded personality once we start playing them live.” Howerdel added, “Some songs get kicked around and massaged for years. But once in a while, one takes shape quickly, as if it had been there all along.”

A limited “Starless” 7-inch is also available via Revolver, with an etched crescent-logo B-side and silver/black or white, sea-blue, and black splatter variants. The band’s UK/European run begins with two sold-out nights at London’s O2 Academy Brixton on June 3 and 4, then moves through festivals and headline dates before a later run with Puscifer in Mexico, South America, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and Honolulu.

A Perfect Circle’s best songs have always lived in that space between art-rock patience and radio-rock force. “Starless” does not try to modernize the formula. It trusts the tension, which is usually where this band does its sharpest work.