The Strokes will return with their first album in six years this summer in the form of Reality Awaits, which the band announced on social media today (April 6).
Soundtracked by 13 seconds of music, the clip features a vintage sports car and the magazine ad-style kicker “In the Flesh, It’s Even Sexier.” No other information has been revealed about the follow-up to 2020’s The New Abnormal, which debuted at No. 4 on the Billboard 200. That project was itself the Strokes’ first album since 2013’s Comedown Machine.
The announcement of Reality Awaits comes as the Strokes return to live duty for the first time this year, after the Julian Casblancas-led band performed only six times combined in 2024 and 2025. The group will play such festivals as Coachella, Outside Lands, Bonnaroo, Shaky Knees, Sea.Hear.Now and Tokyo’s Summer Sonic through late September.
In another twist, guitarist Nick Valensi was an unexplained no-show from a Saturday gig at San Francisco’s Warfield and will not play tonight at a gig at the city’s Bill Graham Civic Auditorium. His replacement is ex-Longwave leader Steve Schlitz, whose band was on the rise in New York around the time of the Strokes’ Is This It-era explosion and most recently filled in for Valensi during a September 2025 Las Vegas show.
For whatever it’s worth, Casablancas implied he and Valensi no longer speak to each other in a November 2025 interview for the Lonely Island and Seth Meyers podcast. Casablancas has also been at work for months at New York’s Flux Studios on the latest album from his side project the Voidz, but no details have emerged about its release date.
