Yeah Yeah Yeahs Announce Summer Tour Dates & Share Subdued ‘Blacktop’ Video

7 February, 2023

Yeah Yeah Yeahs is coming to a city near you! On Tuesday (Feb. 7), the group — which consists of members Karen O, Brian Chase and Nick Zinner — announced that it will hit the road this summer for a tour across North America, Europe and Asia.

The North American leg of the tour will kick off on May 3 with a date at Washington, D.C.’s The Anthem. The trio will make stops, for solo gigs and on the festival circuit, throughout Atlanta, Houston, Minneapolis, Chicago and more before concluding on June 10 at The Greek Theatre in Berkley, Calif. After performing at Japan’s Fuji Rock Festival, the band will hit up London, Paris, Amsterdam and Berlin in August. The Faint and Perfume Genius will be supporting the band on select dates.

Fans wanting to see the Yeah Yeah Yeahs can score pre-sale tickets starting on Wednesday, Feb. 8, at  8 a.m. PT (password is COOLKIDZ23). General on-sale begins on Friday, Feb. 10, at 10 a.m. local. If your city has been skipped this time around, don’t worry. “We’ll be announcing some more dates soon!” the group wrote on Instagram.

In addition to the tour dates, the group dropped the video for “Blackdrop,” which hails from its fifth studio album, Cool It Down. The visual features lead singer Karen O in glittering eye makeup and glossy red lips, singing the track’s emotive lyrics in a fuzzy video reminiscent of the ’80s.

“‘Blacktop’ stuck out to me early on — the demo was very stripped down instrumentally and emotionally. It was a step towards what radical closeness feels like after a long separation,” the singer explained in a press release. “Each record has one of these diamonds in the rough that just feels like flying to me. It felt right to keep the video as stripped down and dare I say beautiful in its naïveté. David Black put us in front of his ’70s analog video camera with the intention to pull stills for band shots. He had me sing to ‘Blacktop’ before I had even memorized the lyrics — I thought I knew the song by heart but it felt like an introduction, like meeting it for the first time. It wasn’t intended to end up as a video and as a return to the earliest visuals from the record it completes a circle. We’re so happy we have it, a simple layered performance for a deceptively simple song. We hope you enjoy.”

Watch the visual for “Blacktop” in the video above. See the dates for Yeah Yeah Yeahs summer tour below.

YEAH YEAH YEAHS 2023 TOUR DATES

  • 5/3 – Washington, DC @ The Anthem
  • 5/5 – Atlanta, GA @ Shaky Knees Music Festival
  • 5/7 – Houston, TX @ 713 Music Hall +
  • 5/9 – Irving, TX @ The Pavilion at Toyota Music Factory +
  • 5/12 – Salt Lake City, UT @ Kilby Block Party
  • 5/13 – Pasadena, CA @ Just Like Heaven
  • 5/26 – Allston, MA @ Boston Calling Music Festival
  • 6/1 – Chicago, IL @ Huntington Bank Pavilion at Northerly Island
  • 6/3 – Minneapolis, MN @ Armory *
  • 6/5 – Morrison, CO @ Red Rocks Amphitheatre *
  • 6/7 – Redmond, WA @ Marymoor Live *
  • 6/8 – Troutdale, OR @ McMenamins Edgefield *
  • 6/10 – Berkeley, CA @ The Greek Theatre *
  • 7/28-30 – Yuzawa, JP @ Fuji Rock Festival
  • 8/25 – London, EN @ All Points East
  • 8/26 – Paris, FR @ Rock en Seine
  • 8/28 – Amsterdam, NL @ Paradiso
  • 8/29 – Berlin, DE @ Columbiahalle

    + w/ The Faint
    * w/ Perfume Genius

Starr Bowenbank

Billboard