Blood Orange releases "Essex Honey"

Today, Blood Orange - aka Dev Hynes - shares his first album in over six years, Essex Honey via RCA Records. He also debuts a self-directed music video for “Countryside” ft. Eva Tolkin, Liam Benzvi, and Ian Isiah. Written, produced, and recorded by Hynes, Essex Honey is a soundtrack created from a dreamscape of his journey working through grief. It is also an album about growing up in Essex (outside London) and the way music has inspired, healed, and interwoven itself through Hynes’ life.

Like all Blood Orange albums, Essex Honey comes with an incredible list of collaborators, some who have created with Hynes multiple times, and others who are new to his sonic fold. These include Lorde, Caroline Polachek, Daniel Caesar, Mustafa, Turnstile’s Brendan Yates, Tariq Al-Sabir, author Zadie Smith - singing on an album for the first time - Ian Isiah, Tirzah, Eva Tolkin, The Durutti Column, Wet’s Kelly Zutrau, Naomi Scott, Amandla Stenberg, and Liam Benzvi.

Essex Honey is everything Hynes does best and then some. Lyrically, he taps into the experiences of himself and his close friends, creating a love letter to his musical inspirations, including himself, wrapped in honesty. Close listens reveal refrains from some of Hynes’ influences growing up, including Elliott Smith, The Replacements, and more, allowing Hynes to lean backwards to his comfort listens while moving his own sound forward. Essex Honey is an album tinted with grief and loss, working towards acceptance and resolution, at a time when the culture is collectively feeling grief and loss, collectively trying to work towards resolution and acceptance. It is a beautiful swirl, an elegantly-crafted pastiche of melodies and sounds, assembled in the way only Hynes knows how, crafting an intimate, scintillating whole and one of the best albums of 2025.

This fall, Blood Orange goes on the road to share Essex Honey with the masses, with headline dates, major festivals, and opening slots for Turnstile and Lorde for select shows on their respective tours. See below for full tour routing and visit his website for more information.

Blood Orange tour dates:

• Sat Sep 20 - San Francisco - Midway DJ Set - Freakquencies
• Sun Sep 21 – San Francisco – Portola Music Festival
• Tue Sep 23 – Columbus - KEMBA LIVE! w/ Turnstile
• Wed Sep 24 – Richmond – Brown’s Island w/ Turnstile
• Fri Sep 26 – Boston – TD Garden w/ Lorde
• Sat Sep 27 – Montreal - Bell Centre w/ Lorde
• Tue Sep 30 – Philadelphia – Wells Fargo Center w/ Lorde
• Tue Oct 14 – Morrison – Red Rocks Amphitheatre w/ Lorde
• Thu Oct 16 - Los Angeles - Shrine Auditorium and Expo Hall
• Fri Oct 17 – Las Vegas – MGM Grand Garden w/ Lorde
• Sat Oct 18 – Inglewood – Kia Forum w/ Lorde
• Wed Oct 29 - Berlin, Germany - Columbiahalle
• Fri Oct 31 – Torino – C2C Festival @ Lingotto Fiere Torino
• Mon Nov 3 - Paris – Pitchfork Festival @ L’Olympia
• Tue Nov 4 - Utrecht, Netherlands - TivoliVredenburg
• Fri Nov 7 - London, UK - Alexandra Palace Theater
• Sat Nov 8 - London, UK - Alexandra Palace Theatre
• Sun Nov 9 - London, UK - Alexandra Palace Theatre
• Mon Nov 10 - London, UK - Alexandra Palace Theatre
• Thu Nov 13 - Bristol, UK - Electric Bristol
• Sat Nov 15 – Manchester – AO Arena w/ Lorde
• Wed Nov 19 - Toronto, ON - History
• Thu Nov 20 - Toronto, ON - History
• Sat Nov 29 - Brooklyn, NY - Brooklyn Steel
• Sun Nov 30 - Brooklyn, NY - Brooklyn Steel
• Tue Dec 2 - Brooklyn, NY - Brooklyn Steel
• Wed Dec 3 - Brooklyn, NY - Brooklyn Steel
• Thu Dec 4 - Brooklyn, NY - Brooklyn Steel
• Fri Dec 5 -Brooklyn, NY - Brooklyn Steel

There are very few artists that have contributed to music in the way that Dev Hynes has done to date. The Grammy winning, multi-instrumentalist, singer/songwriter, producer, composer, has paved a path unlike any other artist since he started out over two decades ago, beginning with his nascent punk roots in Test Icicles in the early 2000’s to having a song - “Champagne Coast” - go gold in 2024 courtesy of TikTok. Indeed, it’s tough to imagine any other artist who has been nominated for a Grammy in a Classical category while winning a Latin Grammy - “Best Alternative Song” with Nathy Peluso - while ALSO releasing albums in neither genre: Blood Orange is firmly rooted in future nostalgic, leftfield pop/R&B.

Hynes’ influence continues to reverberate throughout culture. Since 2012, he has been an in-demand producer for everyone from Mariah Carey and AAP Rocky to Carly Rae Jepsen and Lorde. In 2022, Hynes opened 15 shows at Madison Square Garden for the one and only Harry Styles, in addition to music directing Styles’ Grammy performance of “Watermelon Sugar” (in which he also played bass). He has spent the last three years selling out shows internationally performing his own classical compositions in London, Sydney, Toronto, and more, while also scoring things like Luca Guadagnino’s HBO show We Are Who We Are, Rebecca Hall’s Passing, Paul Schrader’s Master Gardener and shows for acclaimed fashion house Marni twice a season.