Kelsey Lu has announced their first album in seven years. So Help Me God arrives June 12 on Dirty Hit, and the collaborator list alone signals how seriously the music world has been paying attention during Lu’s long absence: Kim Gordon, Sampha, Kamasi Washington. The production was co-handled by Lu, Jack Antonoff, and Yves Rothman. The lead single, “Running to Pain,” arrived this week with a video directed by Savanah Leaf and starring actor Garance Marillier.
That is a lot of weight behind an artist who has, by mainstream metrics, been fairly quiet. But Kelsey Lu’s silence was never inactivity. Since 2019’s Blood, they scored Netflix’s Daughters and A24’s Earth Mama. They collaborated with Jamie xx, Yves Tumor, Boys Noize. They released Blood Transfusion. They kept working at the intersection of classical training, R&B instinct, and avant-garde sensibility that makes their music genuinely hard to place – which is exactly why it is worth paying attention to.
Lu is a cellist who sings. That framing makes it sound niche, but the reality of their music is something more visceral than chamber music. Blood moved between ecstatic devotion and something almost like mourning, with a voice that could float or crack depending on what the moment needed. It was the kind of debut that made you wonder what the follow-up would do with more resources and time.
The answer, based on “Running to Pain,” seems to be: go further in. The song is theatrical in a way that feels earned rather than showy. Lu’s voice circles something heavy with a kind of controlled intensity. The video, with Marillier in a central role, leans into the dramatic potential without overselling it.
The album statement from Lu reads: “So Help Me God was built slowly and intentionally across seven years of transformation. Sonically and emotionally it holds so many different worlds at once – devotion and desire, collapse and becoming – trying to make sense of what it means to break, to believe, to long for something without seeing it clearly, and to be reborn again and again and again.” That is a lot of ambition to carry in a single record. But Lu’s career has never lacked for ambition.
The Kim Gordon collaboration is particularly interesting. Gordon has been having one of the most creatively productive late-career runs in recent memory – her own PLAY ME is still rattling around in anyone who heard it – and she has an ear for collaborations that push her toward new textures rather than comfortable ones. The fact that she wanted to be on this album says something.
Sampha’s presence makes different sense: both artists work in a kind of emotionally exposed register, building songs out of vulnerability rather than around it. They are not obvious collaborators, but they are interesting ones.
Lu will preview the album live at Blue Note Jazz Clubs in New York and Los Angeles next month. That is a venue choice that says something about how they want this music heard – up close, with attention, in a room where people came to listen. After seven years, that seems about right.
So Help Me God is out June 12. “Running to Pain” is out now. Get familiar before the album lands.