Hard-Fi announce details of their new album Sweating Someone Else’s Fever and share the record's first single, 'They Ain’t Your Friends'.
Recharged and looking sharply at a world gone sideways, Sweating Someone Else’s Fever is Staines’ finest’s first album in 15 years, out on June 19 via V2 Records. Written and recorded throughout 2025 in their synonymous ex-taxi-office-turned studio Cherry Lips, and produced by frontman Richard Archer alongside longtime collaborator Wolsey White, the album looks outside the window to the fractured present, and paints it in bold musical strokes, with the same sharp-eyed social commentary that powered their classic debut Stars of CCTV, but with fresh perspective, new sounds and hard-earned freedom.
First single ‘They Ain’t Your Friends’ arrives with suspicious swagger, directing its fire at the fake allegiances of the online world and the hypocrisies of the modern music industry. “At the beginning you could get out there and it was a meritocracy, whereas now it’s basically back to patronage where you have to suck up to the guy who’ll give you some money to write a waltz for his ball,” Archer explains.
Listen to ‘They Ain’t Your Friends’ on Sport Playlists New Releases.
The track’s birth, however, has a far sweeter story. An amalgamation of two old demos, Archer had left the music on his laptop until his tech-savvy 10-year-old son appeared one day, having found them and stitched them together. “They were in different tempos so a lot sounded like chaos, but every now and then it would be really cool. We did it all properly and suddenly it sounded really fresh. Now he’s going, ‘So where’s my cut?!’” the frontman laughs.
The album follows the band’s reunion sparked during lockdown, when Archer livestreamed Stars of CCTV and was stunned by the warmth of the response. A comeback show at London’s O2 Forum Kentish Town sold out in minutes, reminding the quartet why they started. From there came 2024’s Don’t Go Making Plans EP, and then, naturally, new music.
The band have also announced three huge headline dates in December – London, O2 Academy Brixton, O2 Institute Birmingham & O2 Ritz Manchester, seeing them back where they belong, on the country’s biggest indoor stages.
Named after an El Salvador saying about not fighting other people’s ego-based battles, Sweating Someone Else’s Fever represents Hard-Fi unburdened: playing together again, free from pressure, making music for the joy of it.
