Today, Young Fathers — aka the unclassifiable Edinburgh-based trio that earned a guerrilla Mercury Prize win earlier this year — releases their stand-alone single, “Soon Come Soon.” Stream the track below. Young Fathers have also announced that on April 24th they’ll be playing The Echo in Los Angeles, the very city “Soon Come Soon” was recorded.

In a corporate, brown brick Los Angeles building, low and flat, under the dirty blue of the western precipice, amongst the death trade military complex and the Hollywood propaganda machine, a song is born. It’s a boy! An apocalyptic boy, looking just like his mother.

Young Fathers had got together for a wild night in a studio run by Low End Theory founder Daddy Kev. Under the influence of surf, skunk and earthquakes they got choral, and so the end of the world became a pop song.

“Soon Come Soon” lives on its own, it’s not part of an album: This is a singular single. DEAD is not dead and this is a reminder. A reminder that the magic bullet is gonna get you sometime, somehow. It won’t be long. It will soon come soon.

Young Fathers are three young men from Edinburgh and Liberia and Nigeria, all at the same time. Their journey has taken them through various incarnations and styles but they are still only in their 20s. Following two acclaimed mixtapes — TAPE ONE and TAPE TWO — their debut album DEAD was released earlier this year as a part of the first ever collaboration between West Coast indie label Anticon and the UK’s Big Dada.

An intimate epic, the LP was thirty six minutes of… well.. we’re still trying to figure that one out. You can call it hip hop or rap, but Alloysious, G and Kayus sing more than they rap. The sounds of suburbs and the cities of Great Britain are in there rubbing up next to sounds of diverse regions of Africa. There’s an obsession with the surface texture of sound and a psychedelicist’s love of noise. Equally, the deep, warm, maternal reassurance of bass. But the band also craft hook after hook, instant kid-melodies. Above all, Young Fathers insist that their music has to mean something emotionally. If this is a wake, it’s a celebratory one, full of heart.

The album was a cult and critical hit, eventually earning the band an unexpected (to everyone but the band) Merucry Prize win.

This spring, Young Fathers will return to the U.S., playing the aforementioned Los Angeles show at The Echo on April 24th, as well as their first U.S. headlining slot at Music Hall of Williamsburg on April 10th. Full tour dates below.

Tour Dates:
12/7: DRILL Festival @ Brighton, UK
12/10: XOYO @ London, UK (sold out
04/10: Brooklyn, NY @ Music Hall of Williamsburg
04/24: Los Angeles, CA @ The Echo