Philly-native indie-pop group Japanese Breakfast will head out on an extensive, multi-national tour in 2025 in support of For Melancholy Brunettes (& sad women), the project’s upcoming fourth studio LP [get tickets].
The new album, due out March 21st via Dead Oceans, marks a meaningful step forward for Japanese Breakfast, which is fronted by vocalist, guitarist and primary songwriter Michelle Zauner alongside Peter Bradley (guitar), Deven Craige (bass) and Craig Hendrix (drums, keyboards, backing vocals). After recording their first three LPs in improvised recording spaces in warehouses, trailers, and lofts, For Melancholy Brunettes (& sad women) marks the band’s first album to be recorded in a proper studio.
Produced by Grammy-winner Blake Mills—”an innovator of uncommon subtlety, known for his work with everyone from Bob Dylan to Fiona Apple”—the album was tracked at the venerable Sound City in Los Angeles. Per a press release, the record hears Zauner “[pulling] back from the bright extroversion that defined its predecessor Jubilee to examine the darker waves that roil within, the moody, fecund field of melancholy, long held to be the psychic state of poets on the verge of inspiration. The result is an artistic statement of purpose: a mature, intricate, contemplative work that conjures the romantic thrill of a gothic novel.”
The new album follows a transformative period in Zauner’s life during which her Grammy-nominated third album, Jubilee, and her best-selling memoir, Crying In H Mart, earned Japanese Breakfast widespread mainstream acclaim. Reflecting on that success, Zauner came to appreciate the irony of desire, which so often commingles bliss and doom. “I felt seduced by getting what I always wanted,” she said in a statement. “I was flying too close to the sun, and I realized if I kept going I was going to die.” Watch the official lyric video for lead single “Orlando in Love” below.
Japanese Breakfast – “Orlando in Love” (Official Lyric Video)
Japanese Breakfast will celebrate the new album with a lengthy run of concerts dubbed The Melancholy Tour, the band’s first extended outing since 2022’s Jubilee Tour. After kicking off with performances at both weekends of Coachella (4/12, 4/19), the tour will make its way around the U.S. throughout late April and early March, culminating with a hometown show at Philadelphia, PA’s The Met on May 16th.
From there, Japanese Breakfast will head overseas for a run of June and July tour dates in Europe and the U.K, before returning to North America for August performances in San Diego, CA (8/20), San Francisco, CA (8/28), and Bend, OR (8/30) and September shows in Vancouver, BC (9/1) and Minneapolis, MN (9/9).
Tickets for the 2025 Japanese Breakfast tour are now on sale here. If you strike out on Ticketmaster, you can see what’s available on the secondary market here. Click below for a list of upcoming Japanese Breakfast 2025 The Melancholy Tour dates.
