After a six-year silence, The Strokes are back, slipping into 2026 with the low-key confidence that has always defined them. New single ‘Going Shopping’ arrives as the first taste of their seventh album Reality Awaits, due June 26, marking their first release since 2020’s The New Abnormal.
The track itself leans breezy rather than confrontational, carried by bright, interlocking guitar lines from Albert Hammond Jr. and Nick Valensi. There’s a looseness to it, with touches of autotune threading through Julian Casablancas’ delivery, giving the song a slightly off-centre sheen without losing its melodic pull.
Underneath that surface, though, the song takes aim at late-stage capitalism, with Casablancas tossing out lines like “Stockbrokers flyin’ out the window” while drifting toward the idea of escape — somewhere quieter, further out, away from the churn. It’s critique delivered without urgency, more observational than explosive.
In a move that feels deliberately analogue, the band sent the track to fans on cassette ahead of its release, reinforcing that sense of casual, almost anti-modern rollout. They also slipped the song into their set at Coachella this past weekend, where it landed without fanfare, folded into the set rather than framed as a big statement, with the band joking that they were opening for Justin Bieber.
Backseat Mafia caught the band in Adelaide at Harvest Festival last year, where that same sense of restraint was already in place — a band comfortable in its own rhythm, uninterested in forcing the moment.
‘Going Shopping’ doesn’t announce a reinvention. It doesn’t need to. Instead, it suggests a continuation — a band still circling the same questions, just from a slightly different distance.
