TOPS ANNOUNCES NEW ALBUM AND WORLD TOUR DATES

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TOPS by Nori Rasmussen-Martinez

BURY THE KEY DUE AUGUST 22ND VIA GHOSTLY INTERNATIONAL

SHARES NEW SINGLE “CHLORINE” OUT NOW

“Near-perfect songwriting” Pitchfork

“Sophisticated production, nostalgic synths and gorgeous tunes” The Guardian

Following the recent news that they have joined the Ghostly International family, TOPS announces their forthcoming new album, Bury the Key, due August 22nd. The announcement is accompanied by their focus track “Chlorine” alongside news of new tour dates across the UK, Europe and North America.

The album’s centrepiece, “Chlorine,” is an “empty love” ballad that crosses toxins, the nostalgia of chemical-filled waterparks, and the comfort of an unhealthy bar night. Speaking on the single, band member Jane Penny shares, “At one point I was caught in a cycle of going out to the bar hoping that I would cross paths with a certain person who was not good for me but who I felt irresistibly drawn to. I grew up in Edmonton, Alberta, where it’s very cold and I used to go to the pool a lot in the winter. It’s also where I first started going to bars to drink with my friends. I was thinking about alcohol and chlorine both being poison, thinking about all the people that I’ve tried to be close to that have ended up being bad for me, how I still love them all, and I wrote the song ‘Chlorine.'”

TOPS — musicians Jane Penny, David Carriere, Marta Cikojevic and Riley Fleck — write timeless music that reliably threads immediacy and depth. Bury the Key, their first full-length since 2020 and with new label home Ghostly International, is a captivating reintroduction for the Montréal band: ever refined, undoubtedly masters of their melodic craft yet unafraid of evolving and testing themselves against different, at times darker tones.

The album faces feelings once locked away, engaging the give-and-take between happiness, hedonism, and self-destruction. While often inhabited by fictional figures, their glowing, grooving, self-produced songs draw from personal observations: intimacy (both inside and outside the band), toxic behavior, drug use, and apocalyptic dread. When recording started, they noticed a shift and leaned in, jokingly dubbed “evil TOPS,” says Penny. “We’re always kind of seen as a soft band or like naive or friendly in a Canadian way, but we made it a challenge to really channel the world around us.” Through the lens of a looming epoch and the clarity that comes with age, TOPS dip into a more sinister disco realm with Bury the Key, giving their soft-focus sophisti-pop a sharpened edge.

Emerging from Montréal’s DIY scene in the early 2010s as progenitors of an indie pop sound still radiating its influence across the contemporary landscape, TOPS’ secret to longevity is simple: keep the songwriting honest and open-hearted and the recording unforced yet pristine, allowing for a band dynamic deeply attuned at every level. Their songs outline the silhouettes of life, and as time goes on — now five LPs, countless tours, and various side projects in — TOPS have only gotten better at what they do. 

The voice of TOPS is Jane Penny, a songwriter, producer, flutist, and singer whose hushed delivery hosts a deceivingly vast range of expression and has surely informed a wave of today’s greats from Men I Trust to Clairo. Her lyrical subjects never go out of style: the dynamics of power, desire, struggles to be seen, and the complexities of love, whether requited or otherwise. Following her move back to Montréal and first solo release in 2024, Penny returns to the neighbourhoods of her former self a step wiser; the sleek cars and forever highways of her songs, penned with her rhythmic counterpart David Carriere, find assured depth in Bury the Key. Carriere, a songwriter, producer, and guitarist with a flair for high-sheen hooks and the relentless drive to match (other projects include DVC Refreshments and Born At Midnite), adds to his bag of tonal and textural tricks. Drummer Riley Fleck, the band’s heartbeat since day one and occasional gun for others (Jessica Pratt’s live band as of late), broadens his utility, venturing into higher and harder tempos. Keyboardist Marta Cikojevic, who joined TOPS in 2017 just before the landmark I Feel Alive and in 2022 released her breakout debut as Marci (produced by Carriere), expands her role here as well, joining the writing process and backing Penny for some of the record’s fullest, most satisfying vocal lines.

It is rare to see a band so aligned and complete, self-sufficient, specialised but agile and ambitious, reaching an elite level of pop precision as their legacy remains largely unwritten. They’ve toured the world over, from major festivals to the dingiest of dives, sleeping on floors and tour-managing themselves for years, manifesting their success the hard way. Beyond work ethic, it also comes down to chemistry and taste; when pressed for which artists get airplay in their van, some expected names appear, Fleetwood Mac and Steely Dan, but dig deeper and the veneer of artists like China Crisis, Prefab Sprout, and Francois Hardy, Missing Persons, and Everything But the Girl start to fill out the playlist. An instinct for luster and thrills, songs both sweet and bleak, brings the band to Bury the Key, a prismatic album polished out of the rough. Grounded by pain and pleasure, the complicated joys of being alive, of being a band from one of our era’s finest.

Upcoming Live Shows

9/4 – Vancouver, BC @ Vogue Theatre
9/5 – Portland, OR @ Wonder Ballroom
9/6 – Seattle, WA @ The Crocodile (EARLY SHOW)
9/8 – Salt Lake City, UT @ Urban Lounge
9/9 – Denver, CO @ Bluebird Theater
9/11 – Dallas, TX @ Club Dada – Outdoor Stage
9/12 – Houston, TX @ Heights Theater
9/14 – El Paso, TX @ Lowbrow Palace
9/15 – Tucson, AZ @ Club Congress
9/17 – Phoenix, AZ @ The Crescent Ballroom
9/18 – San Diego, CA @ Belly Up
9/19 – San Francisco, CA @ The Fillmore
9/20 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Bellwether
10/1 – New York, NY @ Webster Hall
10/2 – Boston, MA @ The Sinclair
10/3 – Philadelphia, PA @ Underground Arts
10/4 – Washington, DC @ Union Stage
10/6 – Durham, NC @ Motorco Music Hall
10/7 – Asheville, NC @ The Grey Eagle Tavern & Music Hall
10/8 – Atlanta, GA @ Terminal West
10/9 – Nashville, TN @ Exit/In
10/11 – Austin, TX @ Austin City Limits Festival
10/14 – Chicago, IL @ Thalia Hall
10/16 – Detroit, MI @ El Club
10/17 – Toronto, ON @ Phoenix Concert Theatre
10/18 – Montreal, QC @ Théâtre Beanfield
11/10 – Brighton, UK @ Patterns
11/11 – London, UK @ Heaven
11/13 – Dublin, IE @ Workmans Club
11/14 – Glasgow, UK @ Stereo
11/15 – Manchester, UK @ Band on the Wall
11/17 – Leeds, UK @ The Brudenell Social Club
11/18 – Bristol, UK @ Rough Trade
11/20 – Kortrijk, BE @ Wilde Westen
11/21 – Paris, FR @ Point Ephemere
11/22 – Brussels, BE @ Botanique
11/23 – Vlaardingen, NL @ De Kroepoekfabriek
11/24 – Hamburg, DE @ Nochtspeicher
11/26 – Berlin, DE @ Neue Zukunft

Bury the Key album artwork

TOPS
Bury the Key
Ghostly International
August 22nd, 2025

1. Stars Come After You
2. Wheels at Night
3. ICU2
4. Outstanding in the Rain
5. Annihilation
6. Falling on my Sword
7. Call You Back
8. Chlorine
9. Mean Streak
10. Your Ride
11. Standing at the Edge of Fire
12. Paper House

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