London pop outfit Oh Wonder have announced their fourth studio album, ‘22 Break’, alongside the release of its titular lead single.

Its soundscape flourished with crystalline keys and emotive strings, the track sees Oh Wonder tap into a gloomier and more pensive corner of their musicality, with members Josephine Vander Gucht and Anthony West – themselves a couple – singing about what a press release describes as a “tumultuous and deeply personal time in their private lives”.

The track arrives alongside a black-and-white film clip, wherein Vander Gucht and West reenact the dissolve of their relationship. Take a look at it below:

‘22 Break’ is set for release on October 8 via Island, and comes as the follow-up to their 2020 album, ‘No One Else Can Wear Your Crown’. A short film is also slated to be released alongside the record, with a teaser being shared to the duo’s social media pages earlier this week.

Today’s (September 23) press release notes that much of ‘22 Break’ was written “autonomously” in the pair’s home studio shortly after their last album was released, chronicling a rough spot in their relationship at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Vander Gucht commented on the album’s genesis, saying: “We were just writing songs. We had no idea we were writing a breakup album.”

“It was such a weird thing,” West added, “to make a breakup album with the person you’re breaking up with, while you’re breaking up.”

The pair noted that making ‘22 Break’ was integral to Vander Gucht and West mending their relationship, the former calling it “awkward” and “vulnerable” but pointing out that “it also saved us”. Vander Gucht and West were married in August, following the album’s completion.