Stray Dogs is out — Nothing but Thieves go raw again

Lead cut "#5"; 2027 headline run takes in the O2, Co-op Live, Antwerp and Amsterdam.

Nothing but Thieves have released their fifth studio album, Stray Dogs. The record arrived on 25 September via RCA and Sony Music, four days before the end of the week, and closes the short pre-release campaign that began in the spring.

It was recorded at Angelic Studios, the same rooms where the band recorded their self-titled debut in 2015. The album follows 2023’s Dead Club City and leans into a rawer, more organic rock sound after the electronic leanings of that record. Lead single “#5” was released alongside the album; earlier singles were “Evolution”, “Baby Kool (Evelyn)”, the title track and “A Different Kind of Happiness”. The band have described the album as "for the community that we’ve built over the past ten years".

From the debut rooms to a fifth record

Formed in Southend-on-Sea in 2012, Nothing but Thieves signed to RCA in 2014 and released their debut the following October. Broken Machine followed in September 2017 and peaked at number two on the UK albums chart. An EP, What Did You Think When You Made Me This Way?, arrived in October 2018. Moral Panic came in October 2020, with the companion EP Moral Panic II in July 2021. Dead Club City, issued in June 2023, became their first UK number one.

Stray Dogs sits as the next step in that run. Returning to Angelic after a decade ties the new work to the first album rather than to the more programmed textures of Dead Club City, and keeps production in-house. The group remain Conor Mason on vocals and guitar, Joe Langridge-Brown on guitar, Dominic Craik on guitar and keyboards, Philip Blake on bass and James Price on drums — the same five who have carried the catalogue from the Southend years to arena stages.

What is new is the album itself, the simultaneous drop of “#5”, the band’s framing of the record around the audience they have built over ten years, and the full shape of the live campaign that now sits against it.

The road opens in January

A major UK, European and North American headline tour begins in January 2027. Confirmed dates include Ziggo Dome in Amsterdam. For a band who have moved from Essex clubs to those rooms, the run is the live counterpart to an album they have cast as a record for the community that followed them there.

With Stray Dogs now out, the singles campaign is complete and the next chapter is the road. The January dates will be the first full test of the rawer sound in rooms built for scale, and the first chance for that community to hear the tracks in sequence rather than as staggered releases. Further North American and European stops are expected to fill out around the named arenas as the year turns.