Today, critically acclaimed, twice Grammy-nominated, Mercury Prize and BRIT Award–winning artist Arlo Parks announces her new album, Ambiguous Desire, due April 3 via Transgressive Records. The project marks a bold new chapter for Parks—one shaped by movement, nightlife, and a deep immersion into spaces where identity, freedom, and desire collide.
Over the past two years, Arlo Parks dove headfirst into nocturnal worlds that allowed her to exist without limitation. Drawing inspiration from the queer hedonism of NYC’s Paradise Garage, the moody after-dark British textures of The Streets and Burial, the euphoric synth catharsis of LCD Soundsystem, and the grounded house rhythms of Theo Parrish, Parks found herself losing — and discovering — herself on the dancefloor. Ambiguous Desire captures this transformation, presenting Parks at her most confident and experimental yet.
Departing from traditional live-band recording, Parks embraced modular synths, Ableton plugins, and samplers to channel the frenetic energy of the spaces she inhabited. Despite the sonic shift, her signature poetic clarity and emotional precision remain front and center, grounding the album in the lyricism that has defined her career.
Reflecting on the creation of the record, Parks shares:
“I danced more than ever as I made this record, I made more friends than ever too, found myself in the weird underbelly of New York juke nights, unleashed, laughed and laughed and laughed. This record has desire at its center. Desire is a life force, it’s a wanting, a yearning, a momentum—we are all alive because there is something or someone we want. Desire is an engine. But it is also mysterious, tangled, random, enlightening and HUMAN.”
Alongside the album announcement, Arlo Parks unveils the lead single “2SIDED,” which premiered as BBC Radio 1’s Hottest Record. The track offers the first glimpse into the emotional core of Ambiguous Desire, capturing the quiet tension of hoping a new lover feels as deeply as you do. Thick, humming synths and skittering drum machines carry Parks’ intimate vocals, while the accompanying music video—directed by Molly Burdett—explores connection through movement, emotion, and rhythm.
“At its core ‘2SIDED’ is about yearning and tension,” Parks explains. “It’s about being struck by a bolt of desire and building up the courage to put language to that feeling, to make it real.”
The album was crafted in collaboration with producer Baird (Brockhampton, Kevin Abstract), with sessions unfolding between New York City’s community-rooted nightlife and long, introspective days in Baird’s downtown loft. The result is Parks’ most vulnerable, self-affirming, and euphoric work to date.
Since bursting onto the scene with her raw lyricism and unmistakable vocal presence, Arlo Parks has earned nominations for two Grammy Awards, won the Mercury Music Prize for her Gold-certified debut Collapsed in Sunbeams, and received recognition from the BRIT Awards and Ivor Novello Awards. A poet as much as a performer, she followed her acclaimed album My Soft Machine with her first published book, The Magic Border, featuring original poems and imagery by Daniyel Lowden.
Beyond her own releases, Parks is also a featured writer on Beyoncé’s Grammy-winning album Cowboy Carter. Her career highlights include performances at Glastonbury and Coachella, opening tours for Billie Eilish and Harry Styles, and standout appearances on NPR Tiny Desk, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, and The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.
With Ambiguous Desire on the horizon and “2SIDED” setting the tone, Arlo Parks enters a new era defined by movement, connection, and the transformative power of desire.
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