The xx

Eight years is a long time. Long enough that the music world had largely processed the xx as a finished artifact, a beloved trilogy of albums from the late 2000s and 2010s that captured something delicate and precise about nighttime and intimacy, and then quietly concluded. Romy had a solo record. Oliver Sim had a solo record. Jamie xx had In Waves. They’d each moved on. Or so it seemed.

On April 4, 2026, the three of them walked onstage together at Mexico City’s Pepsi Center, and none of that solo work turned out to be an ending. It was preparation.

The Band

The xx formed in London in 2005, emerging from the same south London school that produced a generation of interconnected musicians. Romy Madley Croft, Oliver Sim, and Jamie Smith (Jamie xx) released their debut album in 2009, and it landed with the quiet force of something people had been waiting for without knowing it. The production was minimal. The arrangements felt architectural. The emotional content was enormous.

Their debut went on to win the Mercury Prize and earned them a reputation as one of the most distinctive indie bands of their era. Coexist followed in 2012, doubling down on the whispered intimacy of the first record. I See You in 2017 pushed outward, incorporating elements of dance music and arena production without losing the essential quality that made them worth caring about.

Then came the solo years. Jamie xx’s work as a producer and DJ had always been the sonic engine underneath the band, and his solo releases confirmed him as one of the more interesting artists working in electronic music. Romy’s debut introduced a harder, club-influenced sound. Sim’s album was remarkably candid, built around his experience with illness and identity. All three records were good. None of them felt like replacements for what the trio did together.

The Sound

What the xx do that is almost impossible to replicate is a specific kind of restraint. They understand negative space. The gaps between notes in their songs feel intentional, not absent, and the interplay between Romy and Oliver’s vocals works because neither one overpowers the other. It’s a conversation, not a performance.

Jamie xx’s production gave that intimacy a framework that was simultaneously sparse and rich, using bass and texture in ways that felt borrowed from club music but translated into something far more introspective. The result was music that felt private even when it was playing in a crowded room, which is not an easy trick to pull off.

The Return

Mexico City was the first of three shows there before festival appearances at Lollapalooza, Primavera Sound, Outside Lands, and Coachella. The setlist pulled from across all three albums and all three solo catalogs. They opened with “Crystalised” and closed with “Infinity.” They played the first-ever live version of “Season’s Run.” They covered songs from Jamie’s In Waves and from Romy and Sim’s respective records.

The band has been in the studio since 2023. A new album has not been officially announced. But calling this a “next chapter” strongly implies that what’s coming next is not a victory lap. It is something new.

Whatever it turns out to be, the fact that these three still sound like themselves together after eight years of doing other things is genuinely reassuring. Some bands are irreplaceable. The xx are one of them.