Helen, the shoegaze band led by Grouper's Liz Harris, have announced their first album in over a decade. Linda's Head arrives on 2 October via Kranky, the Chicago-based label that has housed both Helen and Grouper's work Pitchfork.

The record lands 11 years after Helen's lone studio LP, 2015's The Original Faces. That album followed a 2013 two-track single, "Dying All the Time"/"...", and drew on a sound the band's early coverage described as fuzzpop The Line of Best Fit. Helen is a trio: Harris on guitar and vocals, Scott Simmons on bass, and Jed Bindeman on drums Pitchfork.

Linda's Head runs ten tracks: Faraway, Starline, Endless Sky, Linda's Head, Darkblue, Dead Shark, Dead Shark II, Black and Quiet Love, Stay With Me, and Canyon. Two songs — the title track and "Dead Shark II" — are already out Pitchfork.

For Harris, the Helen project sits alongside a prolific solo career as Grouper, whose most recent album Shade came out in 2021. Grouper's work — ambient-leaning, often built around Harris's voice and guitar — has made her one of the most closely followed artists in experimental music. Helen lets the same songwriter plug in and turn the volume up.

Live dates are coming, too. In September, Harris will play a six-show mini-tour across the U.S. and Canada, stopping in Chicago, Toronto, Montreal, New York City, Washington, D.C., and Kingston, New York Pitchfork. Helen themselves have only rarely appeared on stage; the band made their New York City live debut with a two-night stand at Union Pool in May 2023 BrooklynVegan.

For fans of Harris's solo output, Linda's Head offers a chance to hear her in a full-band setting again — one that has been dormant for more than a decade. Whether the eleven-year gap signals a single reunion record or the start of a second chapter for the band remains, for now, unanswered.