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Apr 11, 2023 By Mark Redfern

London trio Girl Ray have announced a new album, Prestige, and shared a new song from it, “Hold Tight,” via a music video. Prestige is due out August 4 via Moshi Moshi. Alex Catouris directed the “Hold Tight” video, which features the band dressed as cowgirls in the English countryside. Watch it below, followed by the album’s tracklist and cover artwork.

“Lyrically this songs is about how appreciative I am to have found my partner, and how my mental load feels so much lighter and easier to bear now that I’m with her,” says singer/guitarist Poppy Hankin in a press release. “The production on this takes some inspiration from HAIM’s incredible record Women in Music Pt. III, and features a subby drum loop inspired by Atlanta’s hip hop scene.”

Hankin had this to add about the video: “Despite being caught in heavy rain the whole day, falling over in the mud countless times, and Alex constantly holding an umbrella over the camera, this video was so much fun to make, and we will remember it as one of our favourite shoots.”

Cantouris had this to say about directing the video: “To mark the eighth video me and Girl Ray have done together, and to celebrate almost 10 years of working alongside each other, we thought what better way to honour the occasion than to drive seven hours to the Lake District and spend a whole day filming in the rain. Fortunately the rain made the perfect backdrop for us to combine our theme of Bananarama meets 19th century Western aesthetic. Frankly, once cow patterned clothes were mentioned, the video really made itself.”

Ben H Allen (Gnarls Barkley, Animal Collective, MIA, Belle & Sebastian) produced Prestige. Girl Ray also features Iris McConnell and Sophie Moss.

The album includes “Everybody’s Saying That,” a new song Girl Ray shared in February via a music video (it was one of our Songs of the Week). In 2021, the trio shared the album’s closing track, “Give Me Your Love,” which was produced by Joe Goddard and Al Doyle from Hot Chip and was also one of our Songs of the Week.

Also in 2021, they shared a cover of Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s 2001 song “Murder on the Dancefloor,” via a music video.

The trio also took part in our 20th Anniversary Covers of Covers album last year, covering HAIM’s “Another Try.”

Their most recent album, Girl, came out in 2019 via Moshi Moshi.

In 2020 we posted a mini-documentary on Girl Ray, where we visited their home studio. Watch the James Loveday-directed film here.

Also read our My Firsts interview with the band from 2019.

Girl was the follow-up to their 2017-released debut album, Earl Grey (it was our Album of the Week and #3 on our Top 15 Debut Albums of 2017 list).

Read our Pleased to Meet You interview with Girl Ray and check out our exclusive photo shoot with the band.

Prestige Tracklist:

01. Intro
02. True Love
03. Up
04. Everybody’s Saying That
05. Love Is Enough
06. Hold Tight
07. Begging You Now
08. Easy
09. Tell Me
10. Wanna Dance
11. Space Song
12. Give Me Your Love

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