Fontaines D.C. release fifth album Dopamine Chamber after Rosalía duet
The Dublin band's album came out on XL Recordings on 16 October 2026, four days after Where Is Gone?, their song with the Spanish singer Rosalía.
Fontaines D.C. released Dopamine Chamber, their fifth studio album, on XL Recordings on 16 October 2026. Four days earlier, on 12 October, the Dublin band put out "Where Is Gone?", a song recorded with the Spanish singer Rosalía, as the album's final single.
The Rosalía track
"Where Is Gone?" is the eighth of the album's 11 tracks. The band posted its lyric video on their own YouTube channel on 12 October, the day the single reached streaming services.
It was the third single from the record. "Marianne", the lead single, came out on 18 August 2026 and "Tongue" followed on 30 September, according to the band's Apple Music listings. The band had shared the tracklist, with the Rosalía song on it, in September.
What the album is about
The band is Grian Chatten, Conor Curley, Conor Deegan III, Tom Coll and Carlos O'Connell, and the album was produced by James Ford. According to the band's press release, as reported by Radio X on 13 October 2026, the songs take in the news people meet in an endless scroll: artificial intelligence, celebrity gossip, political violence and the threat of climate change.
Chatten explained the title in a statement.
The album itself is a dopamine chamber. You step inside and we test these different mind or mood-altering pieces of music on you.
Grian Chatten, Fontaines D.C. frontman
He compared it with Romance, the band's previous album, which he thought was maybe 60 per cent human; the new record, he said, feels more like 60 per cent corrupted. The bassist Conor Deegan said the band's albums have always questioned a sense of place, and that this time the question was where you escape to.
Dopamine Chamber follows Dogrel (2019), A Hero's Death (2020), Skinty Fia (2022) and Romance (2024). Romance was shortlisted for the Mercury Prize in 2025, when Sam Fender won with People Watching, and Dogrel was shortlisted in 2019.
What it means for acts
The band spread three singles over two months and kept the guest collaboration for the final week, so the album had a fresh reason for coverage at each stage. An act with a smaller release can use the same order on its own scale: the lead single early, a second a few weeks out and the strongest collaboration last. The Rosalía song went to streaming services and to the band's YouTube channel on the same day, so every report of it had something readers could play straight away.
