With the ongoing promotion of their ‘Beautiful Mysterious’ album, several successful live dates and a massive upturn in their online following, cult dreamgaze band KEELEY – fronted by the charismatic Keeley Moss – had a hugely successful 2025.
The beginning of 2026 will see the band going back on the road, this time to promote yet another new album, ‘Girl On The Edge of The World’. The ever-prolific Moss claims is the first one that truly “captures the sonic swirl of [the band’s] sound, which suggests it’ll be a genuine treat for those who’ve already enjoyed ‘Floating Above Everything Else’ (2023) and the following year’s ‘Beautiful Mysterious’.
The first taste of this new record actually came at the end of 2025 in the form of ‘Who Wants To See The World’, a track touted as “a movie for the ears”. With immediate effect, everything about those four minutes sounded like classic KEELEY, from the haunting opening driven by My Bloody Valentine-esque arcs of sound, through the perfect 90s jangle of the verse, and into a louder riff that really captured the spirit of old shoegaze sounds, effortlessly reworking them for a twenty first century crowd.
The current single, an edited version of ‘Hungry For The Prize’, presents the rockier side of the KEELEY dreamgaze sound. From muted guitar notes, a really crashy indie rock riff quickly rises, giving the band’s rhythm section more of a prominent role. Those who love the shoegaze edge of their past works certainly won’t be disappointed, however, since the dual guitar sound that fills the bulk of the track sounds superb when drifting between the swirling atmospherics of a great verse and the crunch of one of KEELEY’s most impactful choruses since ‘The Glitter & The Glue’.
Better still, the track’s sedate middle eight finds time to venture a little more deeply into the otherworldly, with echoing tones and backmasked sounds providing a perfect compliment to one of Moss’s quieter vocals. In lots of ways, this track will be a very effective showcase for the first time listener. Although it isn’t entirely in keeping with KEELEY’s “typical” sound, a wealth of strong riffs and a big hook make ‘Hungry For The Prize’ a very accessible listen.
‘Girl On The Edge of The World’ will be released via Definitive Gaze on February 20th. In the meantime, you can take a listen to ‘Hungry For The Prize’ below.