Blood Orange aka Dev Hynes will release his first album in six years – entitled ‘Essex Honey’ – on August 29th, 2025 via RCA Records. 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 Cesar, 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, actors Naomi Scott and Amandala Stenberg, and Liam Benzvi. A full track listing is below.
Today, two brilliant songs from the album are available to hear – ‘Mind Loaded’ and ‘Somewhere In Between’.
‘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, 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, crafting an intimate, scintillating whole and one of the best albums of 2025.
‘Essex Honey’ tracklist:
01. Look at You
02. Thinking Clean
03. Somewhere in Between
04. The Field feat. Caroline Polachek, Tariq Al-Sabir, Daniel Caesar, The Durutti Column
05. Mind Loaded feat. Caroline Polachek, Mustafa, Lorde
06. Vivid Light
07. Countryside feat. Eva Tolkin, Ian Isiah, Liam Benzvi
08. The Last of England
09. Life feat. Tirzah & Charlotte Dos Santos
10. Westerberg feat. Eva Tolkin & Liam Benzvi
11. The Train (King’s Cross) feat. Caroline Polachek
12. Scared of It feat. Brendan Yates & Ben Watt
13. I Listened (Every Night)
14. I Can Go feat. Mabe Fratti & Mustafa