Yuno recently announced his forthcoming album Blest, will drop on May 16th, 2025 via Sub Pop Records, and DSPs. ahead of the album’s release, the artist has shared a video for the title-track, directed by and starring Yuno. He says of the visual, “I turned my entire home recording studio into a giant blue screen to make this video. I hope people in my building don’t get concerned about my storage unit filled with 1800 square feet of blue fabric and a 5-foot tall rose.” Late last month, Yuno released another Blest highlight “True,” a sweet track that marries trap and dream pop. It marked the first new material since the release of “Somebody,” his standalone single from 2021, and the 2018 EP, Moodie, which features his breakout single ”No Going Back.” Yuno will also appear at the 2025 NonCommvention in Philadelphia on Tuesday, May 6th, 2025.

All songs on Blest were written and performed by Yuno, co-produced by Yuno and Frank Corr, who also contributed keyboards, drums, and guitar throughout the record. The album also features additional production and instrumentation by Patrick Wimberly (“True,” “Massive”) at The CRC in Brooklyn, and Nick Sanborn at Betty’s in Durham, NC (“True”). Blest was mixed by Steve Vealey and mastered by Joe La Porta.

Yuno Moodie was born in New York to Jamaican parents from the U.K., and grew up in the coastal Southern city of Jacksonville, Florida. Raised on a sonic diet of reggae and hip-hop records — his father’s copy of 50 Cent’s Get Rich or Die Tryin’ was on regular rotation in the family car throughout the 2000s — Yuno’s musical tastes began to diverge after his grandfather gifted him a skateboard that he found in a garbage can. Eventually, and unexpectedly, Yuno’s new hobby would dovetail with a future career in music.

“The first time I ever got on a skateboard, I broke my foot,” he recalls. It was while he was on the mend that he fully immersed himself in video games like Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, famous gateways for many young punks of the millennial generation. As he studied skate videos to build on his athletic technique, he also cultivated a sixth sense as a composer and overall curator of vibes. “I’m always visualizing things when I’m making music and that helps me complete the full picture,” says Yuno. “To this day I’m like, ‘What does it need to make it fit in a skate video?'”

Having taught himself the bass and guitar at home, his early material began as impressions of harder bands like HIM, Rancid, and AFI; later, he would embrace anti-folk heroes like the Moldy Peaches and Daniel Johnston. With the advent of the social media predecessor Myspace, Yuno began discovering more eclectic local Jacksonville acts, like indie-pop darlings Black Kids — who offered a more diverse look and eclectic sound for the Bold City, which had then been defined by white radio rockers like Limp Bizkit, Yellowcard, and Red Jumpsuit Apparatus. “Seeing Black Kids’ success showed me more of what I could do,” says Yuno.

In time, Yuno taught himself to produce on his laptop, and filled his childhood bedroom with instruments to cultivate a more full-bodied sound, in which he married crunching pop-punk riffs with glimmers of synth strings Yuno uploaded his ballads of teenage longing to Soundcloud, where they began to catch fire within the indie blogosphere — and by 2014, caught the attention of Shabazz Palaces emcee and Sub Pop A&R representative Ishmael Butler. At that time, Yuno had never performed a live show, and could count the number of concerts he’d been to on one hand.

“He DMed me for new music, but I didn’t have anything to bring him,” recalls Yuno. “A year or so later, he came back and asked, ”Do you mind if I share your music with Sub Pop?’ Apparently, they liked it, and I flew out to Seattle to meet everybody.”

Yuno
Blest
Sub Pop Records
Tracklisting:

1. Blest
2. We Belong
3. Massive
4. Unfair
5. Perfect Pear
6. Fall Apart
7. Worst of Times
8. True
9. Gimme Ocean
10. Blitz!

pre-order Blest by Yuno HERE