San Francisco Bay Area, USA – The Asteroid No.4 return in 2026 with “In Praise of Shadows”, their thirteenth full length album and a statement release that reaffirms the band’s enduring place within the modern psychedelic underground.
With our 13th record, “In Praise of Shadows”, we may have made our most ambitious album yet. The title comes from Jun’ichirō Tanizaki’s beautifully meditative book In Praise of Shadows, which reflects on the quiet collision between the deep shadows of traditional Japanese interiors and the dazzling light of the modern age. That tension really resonated with us.
This is a darker sounding effort musically and lyrically but it’s also about finding those special, almost hidden moments that exist in the shadows, and recognizing the beauty that can live inside darker times. In a political and social climate like the one we’re living through now, we wanted to search for the good things that still flicker underneath it all and relying on art and music to do so.
Swathed in multi layered guitars, dense reverb, and hypnotic melodic drift, the record reflects decades of refinement while retaining the immediacy and emotional pull that has defined the band since their earliest releases.
Formed in Philadelphia in the late 1990s and now based in the San Francisco Bay Area, The Asteroid No.4 have built a reputation for immersive live performances and a remarkably prolific catalogue. Across thirteen albums, numerous EPs and singles, the band has continually evolved while remaining deeply connected to the lineage of UK shoegaze and classic psychedelic music that first inspired them.
Sonically, the record draws from the classic shoegaze era and the late ’80s/’90s UK indie movement that’s always inspired us, while also leaning further into goth textures and electronic elements. For the first time on an Asteroid No. 4 record, we even experimented with processed drums, pushing our sound into new, shadowy territory while still holding onto the haze that’s always defined us.
From ‘In Praise of Shadows’ out May 9th, 2026 on Little Cloud Records
The Fat Angel Sings 