David Byrne Announces ‘Who Is the Sky?’ Solo Album Featuring Hayley Williams, St. Vincent and Tom Skinner

Just days after performing the Talking Heads’ “Burning Down the House” with Olivia Rodrigo at New York’s Governors Ball over the weekend David Byrne announced his 11th solo album, Who Is the Sky? The follow-up to Byrne’s 2018 LP American Utopia is due out on Sept. 5 via Matador Records.

Produced by Kid Harpoon (Miley Cyrus, Harry Styles), the 12-track album will feature collaborations with Paramore’s Hayley Williams, St. Vincent and The Smile drummer Tom Skinner, with arrangements by the New York chamber ensemble Ghost Train Orchestra. Byrne previewed the album on Tuesday (June 10) with a video for the universalist anthem about the emotions and feelings we all share.

“Everybody laughs and everybody cries/ Everybody lives and everybody dies/ Everybody eats and everybody loves/ Everybody knows what everybody does,” Byrne sings over strummed acoustic guitar and a bouncy rhythm in the clip in which the camera scoots from left to right as dozens of people act out the lyrics and bust into an impromptu marching band performance when they’re not dancing with selfie sticks.

“Someone I know said, ‘David, you use the word “everybody” a lot.’ I suppose I do that to give an anthropological view of life in New York as we know it,” said Byrne in a statement announcing the album and the single. “Everybody lives, dies, laughs, cries, sleeps and stares at the ceiling. Everybody’s wearing everybody else’s shoes, which not everybody does, but I have done. I tried to sing about these things that could be seen as negative in a way balanced by an uplifting feeling from the groove and the melody, especially at the end, when St. Vincent and I are doing a lot of hollering and singing together. Music can do that – hold opposites simultaneously. I realized that when singing with Robyn earlier this year. Her songs are often sad, but the music is joyous.”

Producer Kid Harpoon (born Tom Hull) added, “It took me a second to realize, oh yeah, these songs are personal, but with David’s unique perspective on life in general. Walking around New York listening to the demo of ‘Everybody Laughs’ was so joyous, because it made me feel like we’re all the same – we all laugh, cry and sing. The thing about David that resonates with a lot of people is that he’s in on the joke. He gets the absurdity of it all, and all of these personal observations are his perspective on it.”

Byrne said there are “more story songs than usual” on the new album, tracks he describes as “mini-narratives based on personal experience including “She Explains Things to Me,” “A Door Called No,” “My Apartment Is My Friend” and “I Met the Buddha at a Downtown Party.” The “jaunty” song with Paramore’s Williams, “What Is the Reason For It?,” is focused on codifying “love in a way logic can rarely accomplish.”

“Does it do something useful?/ Nobody understands,” goes one line from the song.

“I suspected that intimate orchestral arrangements would bring out the emotion I sense is there in these songs,” Byrne said. “It’s something that folks don’t always hear in my work, but this time for sure I thought it was there. At the same time, I also see myself as someone who aspires to be accessible. I imagined that Kid Harpoon would help with that, as well as being a set of trusted ears, since there was a lot going on. People think of producers as people who mainly make a record sound good, and Kid Harpoon did that, but he was also aware of how important the storytelling is.”

The collaboration with St. Vincent comes more than a decade after the two musicians teamed up for the 2012 album Love This Giant.

Among the other contributors to the LP are American Utopia percussionist Mauro Refosco, who has toured and recorded with Byrne for more than three decades. “At my age, at least for me, there’s a ‘don’t give a s–t about what people think’ attitude that kicks in,” Byrne said. “I can step outside my comfort zone with the knowledge that I kind of know who I am by now and sort of know what I’m doing. That said, every new set of songs, every song even, is a new adventure. There’s always a bit of, ‘how do I work this?’ I’ve found that not every collaboration works, but often when they do, it’s because I’m able to clearly impart what it is I’m trying to do. They hopefully get that, and as a result, we’re now joined together heading to the same unknown place.”

Byrne will hit the road with a new live show featuring a 13-person troupe of musicians and dancers to support the album on a world tour slated to kick off on Sept. 14 at Veterans Memorial Auditorium in Providence, R.I.

Watch the “Everybody Laughs” video and check out the Who Is the Sky? tracklist and Byrne’s 2025-2026 tour dates below.

Who Is the Sky? track list:

North America 2025 tour dates:

2026 Australia & New Zealand dates:

2026 Europe & United Kingdom dates: