Out July 10 on Polyvinyl, the seven-track album was recorded by Angela Seo and Jamie Stewart at Krankenschwester, Berlin
Xiu Xiu have announced Eraserhead Xiu Xiu, a project combining a new full-length album with a live concert performance and accompanying film. The release follows the recent death of David Lynch and takes the 1977 film as its point of departure rather than Lynch’s later television work.
Artist: Xiu Xiu
Release Date: 2026-07-10
Genres: Art Rock, Avant-garde, Drone, Experimental Music, Industrial Music, Noise Rock
Label: Polyvinyl
Description: Xiu Xiu announce Eraserhead Xiu Xiu, a new album, live score, and concert film out July 10, 2026 on Polyvinyl Records.
The band was founded in San Jose, California in 2002 by Jamie Stewart, the project’s only constant member, following the dissolution of his previous group Ten in the Swear Jar. The current lineup includes multi-instrumentalists Stewart and Angela Seo, along with percussionist David Kendrick. Across more than twenty years, the band has released fourteen studio albums on labels including Polyvinyl, Bella Union, Kill Rock Stars, and 5 Rue Christine, working across experimental rock, noise pop, post-punk, and electronic music. The band’s name is taken from the 1998 Chinese film Xiu Xiu: The Sent Down Girl.
It’s the most experimental, the most far out, the most minimalistic. It’s as miraculous and wonderful as the music of Twin Peaks, but in a completely different way. Those all exist within a more traditional harmonic orchestral soundtrack milieu, whereas the soundtrack and sonic universe of Eraserhead is completely different.
—Jamie Stewart
The path to Eraserhead Xiu Xiu goes through the band’s earlier Lynch project. In 2016, with the involvement of David Lynch and Angelo Badalamenti, Xiu Xiu released Plays the Music of Twin Peaks and toured the concert program extensively. The band retired the show in 2018, and after Lynch’s death began receiving requests to revive it. They declined. Speaking to Retrofuturista, Stewart explained the reasoning: “We just didn’t want to overly insert ourselves into a set of music that had been so important to us. We didn’t want to diminish its importance by overdoing it.”
Instead of returning to the Twin Peaks repertoire, Stewart and the band turned to Eraserhead, Lynch’s 1977 debut feature. The sound design and score for that film were created by Alan Splet and Lynch. Stewart has described the sonic world of Eraserhead as something qualitatively apart from Lynch’s later work: “It’s the most experimental, the most far out, the most minimalistic. It’s as miraculous and wonderful as the music of Twin Peaks, but in a completely different way. Those all exist within a more traditional harmonic orchestral soundtrack milieu, whereas the soundtrack and sonic universe of Eraserhead is completely different.“
The new project draws on field recordings, homemade instruments built specifically for the concerts, organ, modular synthesizers, vocals, flashlights, electrical interference, and elements of musique concrète. The live performance incorporates a visual component the band describes as imaginary unused auxiliary footage viewed through their own lens. Tracks on the album include “Tetra,” “Sleep Synth,” and a version of “In Heaven,” the song by Peter Ivers that appears in Lynch’s film. The album is structured for playback across two LP or cassette sides, or as a single CD.
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