LANY

Paul Klein (lead-singer & songwriter) had just finished a workout at his local gym last summer when his and LANY’s world was (for a brief moment, quite literally) flipped upside down. Only a couple miles from where he lives in Hollywood, he hopped on his vespa scooter to head home and a minute later was crossing an intersection when a car appeared from nowhere. He squeezed the brakes, braced for impact and at the last second “let go”. He woke up in an ambulance. “I’m so grateful to be alive, but I hope there are some parts of me that died on the road that day,” he says. “I was holding onto some things that I didn’t need to be. Resentment. Unforgiveness. I was becoming pretty bitter and callous — hard of heart.” It’s poetic then that the band’s new album, titled “Soft”, addresses his attempts to fight against that internal hardness — to stay soft of the inside, while simultaneously fighting to rehabilitate an even stronger, harder exterior to protect that same vulnerability and softness within. Thematically and visually “Soft” exists in tension — an intentional contrast of the hard and soft. Tangible, literal, physical hardness juxtaposed with metaphorical, relational (and, at times too, physical) softness. Sonically, the album explores these same tensions — much of the softness and vulnerability of lyric that has defined LANY’s acclaimed career, now with a harder, braver edge to the production. The list of brave choices on “Soft” begins with Klein’s willingness to start writing mere weeks after waking up in the ambulance. It continues with the band’s decision to produce the album entirely with Tommy King, who has a more abstract, indie production background / history (Bon Iver, Dijon, Mk.gee, Haim) and ends with a sonic-identity that is simultaneously incredibly fresh and peculiarly familiar (another dichotomy that defines the record and has come to define the band).The soft piano ballads, west-coast-indie guitars and bedroom pop sonics that LANY helped create and popularize aren’t entirely abandoned, but their sound and Klein’s writing has matured, expanded and evolved. With “Soft” now out, the band have also announced part 1 of of their Soft World Tour, kicking off with a first-time headline show in Dubai to a sold out Coca-Cola Arena. The 2026 tour will canvas the globe; highlights of the 300,000+ headline ticket run including first-times headlining the Intuit Dome locally in LA, Barclays Center in Brooklyn and OVO Wembley Arena in London. Previously nominated for “Best Pop Tour” by Pollstar, the band’s energetic, entrancing, and ever-evolving live show continues to captivate fans on multiple continents.