The boys are back. After a three-year break between albums, Twenty One Pilots dropped its latest studio LP Clancy at midnight Friday (May 24), complete with 13 new tracks.
Led by the singles “Overcompensate,” “Next Semester” and “Backslide,” Clancy also features the tracks “Midwest Indigo,” “Routines in the Night,” “Vignette,” “The Craving (Jenna’s Version),” “Lavish,” “Navigating, “Snap Back,” “Oldies Station,” “At the Risk of Feeling Dumb” and “Paladin Strait.” It follows 2021’s Scaled and Icy –which peaked at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 — and concludes the duo’s long-running album saga that started with 2015’s Blurryface and 2018’s Trench.
“The name of the record is Clancy, and that’s actually the protagonist of the story we’ve been telling,” singer-guitarist Tyler Joseph explained in a radio interview alongside drummer Josh Dun with Z100 earlier this month. “Blurryface is kind of the bad guy, he’s the antagonist. They’ve been at it for a while, and we’re going to have the final battle here.”
Twenty One Pilots first teased their new era with a cryptic video message in February, which served as a recap of all the complex lore forged by the band’s previous Clancy-universe albums over the past decade. “I am trapped,” Joseph said in a voiceover over clips of the dystopian, allegorical city Dema. “Stuck in a cycle I’ve never been able to break. I want to believe this is the last time, I don’t know for sure. I’ll start with what I do know.”
The Columbus musicians is now gearing up to embark on a massive tour in support of the album, a 59-date trek that kicks off Aug. 15. Joseph and Dun will travel through cities across the United States — including Denver, Seattle, Phoenix, New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago — before heading overseas for legs in Europe and Australia.
Listen to Clancy below.