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Kelela details New Avatar era with Oscar Scheller-produced single ‘linknb’ and July 10 release
Kelela announces New Avatar, sharing the Oscar Scheller-produced single "linknb" and setting a July 10 release via Warp Records.
Kelela has pushed the next chapter of her career into view: her third album, New Avatar, lands July 10 via Warp Records, and arrives with a second preview in the form of the Oscar Scheller-produced single “linknb”. The record is now available for pre-order and pre-save at.
“linknb” follows the earlier release of “idea 1” and, by Kelela’s account, emerges from a knotty creative moment. Written during an intense period of writer’s block, the song began as a private mantra she used to pull herself back into the work. “It’s not hard to be brave/ Easier to give too much away/ All I know is that I paved the way, underpaid,” she sings—lines that double as self-address and pep talk, honest and quietly insistive.
Sonically, New Avatar is pitched as a return to Kelela’s R&B instincts while pushing into harder, dance-leaning textures: distorted guitars braided with club rhythms and implacable production choices that keep her voice at the center. The record also stacks a modest constellation of collaborators, including PinkPantheress, A. K. Paul, and Fousheé, suggesting a willingness to fold contemporary pop textures into her established emotional register.
“This album finds solace in confronting,” Kelela said of the upcoming record. “I don’t want the music to be a distraction from what’s really going on in the world; I want it to make sense in this crazy moment while helping people get in touch with the beauty and joy they’re also experiencing.”
Tracklist
The New Avatar tracklist is:
01. ‘Idea 1
02. ‘Point Blank’
03. ‘Goin Down’
04. ‘Outta Time’ (Feat. A. K. Paul)
05. ‘Against Me’
06. ‘Crystalize’
07. ‘Retaliation Lullaby’
08. ‘linknb’
09. ‘Don’t Piss Me Off’
10. ‘New Life Forms’ (Feat. Fousheé)
11. ‘The Bridge’ (Feat. Pinkpantheress)
12. ‘If We Meet Again’
Even as she frames the album around confrontation and repair, Kelela has been careful to note the texture of life that sits beside political or social calamity. “People also need to know that my friends and I are laughing constantly and that humour isn’t a defence mechanism; it’s an expression of how sharp our read is and how clearly we see the world,” she added—a reminder that the project is intended to balance gravity with bite and warmth.
New Avatar arrives after a long arc that has positioned Kelela as one of contemporary R&B’s most considered artists. She followed her 2017 debut Take Me Apart with 2023’s Raven, an album that earned a four-star review from NME for its reassembly of prior fragments: “In a debut album which was all about breaking down,” the review read, “‘Raven’ reminds us of what it means to be put back together.”
After Raven she released RAVE:N, The Remixes, described in its announcement as “a transcending fusion of mashups and sounds, reimagined from the original ‘Raven’ album alongside her musical partner in crime Asmara.” That remix collection pulled in a wide range of collaborators, including Shygirl, Yaeji, Liv.e, BbyMutha, LEECH and others—an appetite for cross-pollination that New Avatar seems poised to continue, albeit with a different color palette and a clearer autobiographical throughline.
The decision to center this record on confrontation and joy, on humour as clarity, places New Avatar as both a continuation and a recalibration: Kelela is keeping the interpersonal intensity of her earlier work while nudging it into more aggressive production and contemporary collaborators. The July release will show whether that balance yields the catharsis she’s promising, or another iteration of an artist still refining how to translate private repair into public songs.
