Today, GRAMMY® Award-winning English rock titans MUSE release their immersive new album, The Wow! Signal. Fueled by adventurous production and explosive instrumentation, the band’s tenth full-length races through a series of diverse soundscapes in a feverish quest to unravel themes of extraterrestrial communication, technological anxiety, existential wonder, and the human search for meaning in an increasingly disconnected world. Listen HERE. The Wow! Signal arrives alongside a visualizer for the standout track, “Hush” featuring Ellie Goulding. Watch HERE.
Arriving toward the end of The Wow! Signal, “Hush” hits like a last desperate grasp for connection between two souls in the midst of an apocalyptic event. Matt Bellamy and Ellie Goulding both make pleas to “forget the world together” over a score that moves from soaring raw riffage to minimal passages powered by spare piano and a four-four beat that kicks like a pounding heart. Eventually, their voices meet on the massive chorus: “It’s getting too loud, don’t let it drown us out (ooh hush) / It’s you and me now, there’s chaos all around / So lose yourself, free yourself, and feel / Take a breath and … hush.”
MUSE shared a strikingly varied set of singles ahead of The Wow! Signal, which now come together to create a single sonic universe. Most recent was the deliriously urgent “Nightshift Superstar,” which incorporates French House to create what Kerrang! called “a shimmering slice of OTT disco-rock.” And last month brought the towering “Hexagons,” “a vibrant, stratospheric expedition into the most technically bold and audaciously beautiful components of the band’s sound,” according to Rock Sound. Before that was “Cryogen“ — hailed by NME as “a blast of classic MUSE harking back to their ’00s days with wailing riffs [and an] arena-destroying chorus” — and the hopeful “Be With You,” which earned 3 million streams in its first week and became the #1 Most Added at Alternative Radio, where it since climbed to #5.
The band originally stirred up rampant album rumors and acclaim last year with “Unravelling.” With arpeggiated synths that crash into a colossal wall of barbed riffs, the single racked up praise from an array of outlets including Rolling Stone (“transcendent“) Guitar World (“endlessly gratifying“), and DIY Magazine, who lovingly called the song “balls-to-the-wall maximalist.” The same could be said of The Wow! Signal, which includes writing and production by Dan Lancaster (Bring Me The Horizon, Blink-182) — who performs keys/additional guitar in the MUSE live band — plus additional production by Aleks Von Korff and BloodPop®, choir vocals, and strings from the London Metropolitan Orchestra.
The Wow! Signal takes its name from one of the most compelling interstellar mysteries of the last century: a powerful 72-second radio burst detected in 1977 originating from the constellation Sagittarius with a bandwidth and intensity that suggested a possible extraterrestrial source. The astronomer who discovered the anomaly famously circled the now-iconic sequence “6EQUJ5” and wrote “WOW!” on the printout beside it — giving the signal its name and cementing its place in scientific and pop-culture lore.
It’s an apt reference point for an album that thrums with mystery, awe, hope, and anxiety. Dive deep into the world of The Wow! Signal now.
MUSE, The Wow! Signal
1. “The Dark Forest”
2. “Nightshift Superstar”
3. “Shimmering Scars”
4. “Cryogen”
5. “Be With You”
6. “Hexagons”
7. “The Sickness In You & I”
8. “Unravelling”
9. “Hush” ft. Ellie Goulding
10. “Space Debris”
