Blondshell has officially announced her third studio album, Violins, arriving September 25 via Partisan Records. Alongside the announcement, Sabrina Teitelbaum has released the album’s title track and an accompanying music video, offering the clearest preview yet of a record that explores healing, violence, friendship, spirituality, and personal transformation.
Produced by longtime collaborator Yves Rothman, mixed by Beatriz Artola, and mastered by Emily Lazar, Violins follows Blondshell’s critically acclaimed 2025 album If You Asked For A Picture. Across 11 tracks, Teitelbaum expands the emotionally direct songwriting and guitar-driven sound that established her as one of alternative rock‘s most distinctive voices.
Rather than centering fractured romantic relationships as she has in previous releases, Violins widens its emotional scope. The album examines the difficult coexistence of pain and beauty, using vivid imagery and more impressionistic storytelling to explore recovery, troubled friendships, religion, and the relationship between the mind and body.
“I felt like I didn’t need to overexplain anything, like I can trust the people listening more,” Teitelbaum says. “It feels like every time I make a record, I get closer to making the thing that I really want to make.”
The newly released title track serves as the emotional centerpiece of Violins. Beginning with restrained instrumentation before building into one of the album’s biggest guitar hooks, the song captures the reality that healing is rarely immediate. Instead, it unfolds slowly through patience, acceptance, and the willingness to embrace limitations rather than outrun them.
“This song sums up the album in a lot of ways,” Teitelbaum explains. “When I was writing I felt really drawn to images of patience and kindness, for example putting your head on someone’s shoulder, alongside images of violence. I was also inspired by the idea of healing slowly and refusing to be rushed by any outside force. Things genuinely just take the time they take.”
The music video for “Violins,” directed by Sabra Binder, mirrors those themes through surreal visual storytelling. Set almost entirely inside a single room, the video follows Blondshell as she desperately tries to preserve a melting fawn-shaped ice sculpture, creating striking imagery inspired by Alexander McQueen‘s sculptural fashion work and surrealist theater.
The album announcement follows the release of “Heart Has To Work So Hard,” Blondshell’s first new music since If You Asked For A Picture and its companion project Another Picture, which featured collaborations with Conor Oberst, Samia, John Glacier, and Gigi Perez. More recently, Teitelbaum joined Kesha’s Bonnaroo SuperJam for a performance of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ classic “Maps.”
Musically, Violins continues to evolve Blondshell’s signature blend of alternative rock and emotionally incisive songwriting while introducing new influences that include Gang of Four, Teenage Fanclub, The Go-Betweens, and Sade. The record balances towering guitar arrangements with melodic restraint, creating songs that feel equally intimate and cinematic.
Three albums into her partnership with producer Yves Rothman, Teitelbaum says the creative process has become increasingly instinctive.
“I felt like I wasn’t walking in the dark anymore,” she says. “I spend more time with Yves than almost anybody. We just have such an efficient working relationship.”
Following the album’s release, Blondshell will embark on her largest headline tour to date. The North American leg begins October 14 in San Diego before making stops at Los Angeles‘ Wiltern Theatre, San Francisco‘s historic Castro Theatre, Seattle’s Showbox SoDo, Chicago’s Vic Theatre, Toronto’s Danforth Music Hall, Philadelphia’s Union Transfer, Washington, D.C.’s 9:30 Club, New York City’s Terminal 5, and Boston’s House of Blues. The tour continues across Europe and the United Kingdom, culminating with a headline performance at London’s Roundhouse before concluding in Dublin.
With Violins, Blondshell appears less interested in providing easy answers than documenting the difficult work of living with contradiction. It is a record built around patience instead of resolution, finding power not in overcoming life’s complexities but in learning to exist alongside them. If the title track is any indication, Teitelbaum’s third album may prove to be her most emotionally expansive and artistically confident work yet.
Violins is available for pre-save now and will be released September 25 via Partisan Records.
Featured image credit: Reese Layton
