There’s Still Plenty of Buzz for Ladyhawke's Next Chapter

BIGSOUND has built its reputation on putting emerging Australian and New Zealand artists in front of the industry, making the inclusion of an established, ARIA Award-winning name like Ladyhawke on its 2026 lineup an intriguing one.

But if her opening night showcase at Brisbane's Crowbar was any indication, there's plenty of appetite for what comes next from the Auckland-based songwriter, with the venue pushed close to capacity on Tuesday night.

Speaking to Rolling Stone AU/NZ on-ground at BIGSOUND this week, Ladyhawke took it in stride when asked why she wanted to get on the 2026 bill.

“I guess, maybe, to launch my meteoric comeback,” she laughed. “I have a single [out now], and a record coming out in the new year. So it just felt like a good time… I wanted to be in this environment where there’s a lot of new talent and [where] it felt exciting to be part of.”

Ladyhawke has been treating fans to some of that new music this week, as well as some old favourites like “My Delirium,” which picked up ARIA and New Zealand Music Award wins after its release back in 2008.

As she told Rolling Stone AU/NZ, she decided a little over a year ago that she wanted to start work on a new album – her first since 2021’s Time Flies – and was buoyed by PNAU legend and Teenagers bandmate Nick Littlemore.

“I was getting really angry at the world, as I think we all are right now,” she said. “I was just feeling disillusioned by everything. And so, I wrote a song. Nick had the idea to strip out all the music that I’d done and just send the full acapella to his friend, Dom Dias, who’s an amazing producer and DJ. He wrote a new track underneath my acapella and it kind of set the theme for the record of me going, ‘Okay, I’m at this stage in my life right now. I don’t care who likes me and who doesn’t.’

“And plus I’m just angry at the world and how everything’s going, and I need to put it somewhere. So I thought, why not just make a record?”

What exactly is making Ladyhawke angry?

“The billionaires fucking up the planet. White men having a bloody hold on everything. Racism, bigotry, homophobia, everything that’s happening in the United States, everything that seems to be happening everywhere,” she said.

“As a queer person, you start to feel smaller and smaller, so you need to make yourself bigger and bigger. It’s frustrating, and I’m so sick of it. I didn’t know what to do. I just thought, why not make a record and express that I’m at this time in my life where I’m in my forties?

“I’ve already done the thing, you know? The rock records, pop records. I just want to do something that expresses where I am in my life right now. I’m a mum. I care about the world that my daughter is inheriting and what the earth is going to look like when she’s my age.”

That sentiment was not something Ladyhawke held at the start of her career. The success of her self-titled debut album, as well as appearing on PNAU’s now iconic dance anthem, “Embrace,” helped Ladyhawke become a household name in Australia and New Zealand in a short period of time.

Fast forward to 2026, she believes the music industry is a vastly different place from the one she entered. And it hasn’t always been for good.

“When you’re a kid, and you’re making music, you just party and you don’t think outside of your own little bubble,” she reflected. “And it took life experience for me to realise that there’s so much, there’s so much I could talk about. I think it sometimes it takes years of experience just doing life, travelling, seeing the world, educating yourself on everything… the landscape is completely different. Like, I couldn’t have actually imagined that it would be this way.

“AI is terrifying for artists and creative people. It’s scary. The whole industry has changed. I feel like my first record came out when the music industry was on the precipice of a change for the worse. I was teetering on the edge with that first record and then everything changed, [like] streaming services. People for quite a [long] time stopped buying physical media, CDs, records.

“It was tough. It’s sort of come full circle. People love physical media now. The young people like collecting vinyl CDs, cassette tapes. I feel like the thing with artists is that all the young artists coming up, they hate AI. It’s great!”

Ladyhawke hopes to release her new album in early 2027.