Tough Cookie name their EP Devotion after the Patti Smith book August read on tour

Tough Cookie have dated their second record, and named it after a paperback that travelled with the band. Devotion, an EP, arrives on 23 October.

The title comes from Patti Smith. August, the London band's front person and lyricist, took Smith's book Devotion on the tour bus behind their first project and found it working as both solace and instruction over the course of the run. Books read on tour tend to leave fingerprints on what gets written afterwards; this one left its name.

What happened next matters more to the record. August entered therapy on returning home, and the emotional openness that came out of it runs underneath everything on the EP. That is a sequence worth stating plainly rather than dressing up: a band went out, came back changed, and made the next thing from what changed.

The first song from it is Let Me Die (Curled In Your Arms), out now with a video. Clash hears Jeff Buckley in places and The Bends-era Radiohead in others, and singles out the frank poetry of the writing, which is a fair description of a lyric that does not hedge.

It also carries the physical quality of the band live. Tough Cookie have built their reputation on how they behave on stage rather than on a studio sound, and the new song leans into that rather than smoothing it out for a recording.

The EP follows The Countryside Is Good For You, the 2025 debut project that put them on the radar of anyone paying attention to new British guitar music. That record was enough to get them called breakouts; this one has to decide what they are.

Devotion is available to pre-order now.

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