Katie Stelmanis - aka Austra - has announced that she will release new album 'Hirudin' later this year, unveiling new single 'Anywayz' alongside the news.
"I was losing faith in my own ideas", she says of the period before she began work on the new album. "My creative and personal relationships were heavily intertwined, and I knew the only answer was to part ways with all of the people and comforts that I'd known for the better part of a decade and start again".
That turned out to be a good move. She goes on: "I found myself really enjoying the role of producer for this record, directing and arranging a very disparate array of parts and people and feeling strong in my own conviction for what I wanted it to sound like".
Having entirely self-produced her first three records, for 'Hirudin' she collaborated with Rodaidh McDonald and Joseph Shabason, then bringing in David Wrench to mix and Heba Kadry to master the record. "It was incredibly liberating and a huge learning process to work with so many different people", she says. "I felt completely revitalised".
'Hirudin' will be released on 1 May, and Austra will play a sold out one-off show at London's Hoxton Hall on 12 May. Watch the video for 'Anywayz' here: