Gwenno releases special Gold edition of new album

Gwenno has announced her new album ‘Utopia’ due out 11th July, with a new single ‘Dancing On Volcanoes’ released today.

A special ‘Dinked’ edition of the album is also available for pre-order. Gwenno’s Dinked set boasts an exclusive gold vinyl colourway, an alternate gold mirri-board outer sleeve, printed inners, a lyric sheet, and a signed A4 playing card-style print.

The album is the follow-up to her hugely acclaimed third album ‘Tresor’ which was nominated for the Mercury Music Prize in 2022.

Having released three albums in Welsh and Cornish, 'Utopia' is Gwenno Saunders’ first album recorded predominantly in English, and presents a very different side to her life and songwriting.

Man alive are we proud to bring you GOLD GWENNO!!!

Shop; https://t.co/gxWUayDa1I… pic.twitter.com/7gvJPBwRi1

— DINKED (@dinkededition) April 7, 2025

To accompany the announcement the musician has shared lead single ‘Dancing On Volcanoes’ together with a stylish black & white video shot in Las Vegas.

Over a backing track that swirls, drives and punches like a motorik-fuelled version of The Smiths, Gwenno looks back on dancefloors that no longer exist, to the act of dancing as catharsis and the magic of losing oneself until 5am in a strange and beautiful new environment.

Having recorded three albums in Welsh and Cornish, ‘Utopia’ is Gwenno Saunders’ first record in English, and presents a quite different side of her life and songwriting.

Forty-three years into her life, Saunders has been many people. The disaffected Cardiff schoolgirl; the teenage Las Vegas dancer; the singer in indie pop group The Pipettes. There was a turn in a Bollywood film, a nightclub tour, a stint cleaning floors in an East London pub.

Long before she would become an acclaimed solo songwriter in both Welsh and Cornish, a winner of the Welsh Music Prize, a nominee for the Mercury, a Bard of the Cornish Gorsedh, there were the days of Nevada, London, Brighton; of Irish dancing, techno clubs, messiness and chaos.

‘Utopia’ is described as ‘an extraordinary exploration of all of these selves’. If the singer regards her first three solo records — 2014’s Y Dydd Olaf, 2018’s Le Kov and 2022’s Tresor as “childhood records”, rooted in her upbringing, her parents, her formative identity, then Utopia captures a time of self-determination and experimentation.

These are songs of discovery, of the years between being someone’s daughter and becoming someone’s wife and someone’s mother.

They range from floor-fillers to piano ballads, via contributions from Cate Le Bon and H. Hawkline, and encompass William Blake, a favourite Edrica Huws poem, and the Number 73 bus. It is her finest work to date.

Order the new album HERE

Gwenno was recently added to the lineup for Alanis Morissette’s headline show in Cardiff this summer.

The Mercury Prize nominee will perform alongside previously announced special guests US rock singer-songwriter Liz Phair and Anglesey born and bred indie-pop princess Megan Wyn complementing the fully female bill as global superstar Morissette brings her 2025 World Tour to Blackweir Fields in Cardiff on Wednesday July 2.

To purchase tickets and find out more go to blackweirlive.com