Thom Yorke Has a New Solo Album on the Way This Year

Thom Yorke is gearing up to release a new solo album later this year, and the confirmation didn't even come from him. Radiohead bandmate Ed O'Brien casually dropped the news during a recent conversation with Kyle Meredith for Consequence of Sound, framing it as part of a broader creative surge happening across the Radiohead camp.

"Thom's got a solo album that's going to come out later in the year, I think," O'Brien told Consequence of Sound, while discussing how the band's individual pursuits feed into the larger ecosystem. He described Radiohead as "the mothership" with each member's projects acting as "little satellites" orbiting around it.

If it materializes on schedule, the record would be Yorke's fourth proper solo album, following The Eraser in 2006, Tomorrow's Modern Boxes in 2014, and Anima in 2019. That's a seven-year gap — his longest yet between solo releases — though calling him idle during that stretch would be absurd. He scored the film Confidenza, linked up with Mark Pritchard for the Tall Tales collaboration, and kept The Smile humming alongside Jonny Greenwood and Tom Skinner.

“Jonny Greenwood has Ranjha, a collaboration with Shye Ben Tzur and The Rajasthan Express, also arriving in May.”

What makes this moment interesting is the sheer volume of activity coming from every corner of the Radiohead universe simultaneously. O'Brien's own project Blue Morpho drops May 22. Jonny Greenwood has Ranjha, a collaboration with Shye Ben Tzur and The Rajasthan Express, also arriving in May. Philip Selway is working on his own material. And Colin Greenwood is currently holding down bass duties with Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. That's all five members with something cooking at once.

O'Brien also confirmed that Radiohead plan to reconvene for touring starting in 2027, which reframes all of this solo output as less of a band drifting apart and more of a group deliberately using their downtime. It's a pretty healthy model, honestly — let everyone scratch their individual itches so the mothership launches cleaner when it's time.

No title, tracklist, or release date has surfaced for Yorke's album yet. Given his tendency to let records arrive with minimal fanfare — Anima dropped alongside a Paul Thomas Anderson short film with barely a whisper of traditional rollout — don't expect a drawn-out promo cycle. Keep your eyes on the fall and your notifications on.