After six years of near silence, Iceland’s indie-folk darlings Of Monsters And Men have finally resurfaced with a new album on the horizon, along with a gently stirring single to usher it in.
The band’s next full-length is titled All Is Love And Pain In The Mouse Parade, and it’s set to land on October 17, their first proper album since 2019’s Fever Dream.
The new project promises to dive deeper into the band’s emotional undercurrent, blending joy and sorrow in a way that only they can. According to singer and lyricist Nanna Hilmarsdóttir, the record is shaped by the collective history of the band and the wider community around them, with personal experience bleeding into a broader, introspective narrative.
Alongside the announcement comes Ordinary Creature, a track that sounds exactly like the title implies. It’s warm, vulnerable, and soaked in that unmistakable Scandinavian melancholy. Self-produced and recorded in their Iceland studio, the song drifts gently between comfort and ache, built around the idea of returning to oneself after a rough spell.
“It’s about the feeling of yearning for that someone that brings you comfort,” the band shared. “That moment when you start coming back to yourself again and remembering what it’s like to be an ordinary creature.” It’s a subtle shift from the big, stomping choruses of Little Talks, but it’s unmistakably them.
The video for Ordinary Creature leans all the way into their Icelandic roots, directed by Erlendur Sveinsson and set in the hushed streets and open skies of coastal Selvogur. There’s something that feels timeless about the visuals, just as there is in the song.
Six years is a long time between records, but this doesn’t feel like a return so much as a continuation, a new chapter from a band who have never rushed the process and quite frankly, never needed to.
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