Yeah Yeah Yeahs have released Hidden in Pieces Live at the Royal Albert Hall, a 13-track live album, alongside a 22-minute concert film. The recording captures their 2025 show at the London venue, the first time the band had played there, during the Hidden in Pieces tour.
That tour was a theatre run rather than a rock show, built on acoustic guitars, strings and piano arrangements, with rare deep cuts sitting next to reworked classics. The band prepared the arrangements at Sonic Ranch in Texas in February 2025, working with string arranger Jherek Bischoff to write for a quartet and acoustic instrumentation across nearly 24 songs in under a week.
Karen O has been direct about why the shows happened at all. She said the record came out of a need to commune with the band and their fan family in 2025, after the election, and that Yeah Yeah Yeahs have rarely chosen when to return, because the times tend to choose for them.
"The real alchemy happened when we played the hall, it clicked into place," she said, adding that every show on the small tour was extraordinarily vulnerable. She also singled out the pipe organ passage in Skeletons, and said Nick Zinner felt as though his fingers were being guided on the guitar neck. The performance opens with an ode to David Lynch, who died a month before the tour began.
The film is a separate object rather than a video of the same night. Directed by Barnaby Clay and shot in black and white at the Orpheum Theatre in Los Angeles at the end of the band's 25th anniversary tour, it streams on the Criterion Channel and screens in selected cinemas in the UK, United States, Australia, Mexico and Japan, several of them as double features. Clay said he wanted something delicate and dream-like, closer to a precious memory than a concert document.
A physical edition of the live album, plus an expanded digital deluxe with bonus recordings from US shows, arrives on 23 October through Secretly Canadian, with the extra tracks reaching streaming the same day. Their last studio release was Cool It Down in 2022, which makes this the band's first new rock record in four years even though none of it is new material. Screening tickets went on sale on 3 September, and the release is listed on the release calendar.
The facts
- The live album carries 13 tracks recorded at London's Royal Albert Hall.
- It was their first ever performance at the venue.
- The companion film runs 22 minutes and was directed by Barnaby Clay.
- The film was shot at the Orpheum Theatre in Los Angeles.
- Secretly Canadian releases physical and deluxe editions on 23 October.
- String arranger Jherek Bischoff worked on the arrangements at Sonic Ranch.
- The performance opens with an ode to David Lynch.
- Their last studio album was Cool It Down in 2022.
How this checks out
Confirmed
Reported by 6 independent outlets
Independent outlets reported it separately, enough to treat it as confirmed.
Cited sources 6
Every outlet that reported this, linked to what it published. Equal credits, in alphabetical order.