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THAO
Show Me (Kill Rock Stars)
Add date: 11.3.2026
Release date: 10.30.2026
Links:
Apple Music
Bandcamp
Facebook
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Kill Rock Stars
Official Website
Spotify
Tidal
TikTok
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The plan was always to come back to her first love. THAO, critically acclaimed songwriter and performer, is releasing her first album in six years, and it is a stunning return.
Titled quite appropriately, Show Me is a deeply personal exploration of THAO’s journey toward full embodiment, a flaying of flesh and old burden to reveal the rapturously beating heart therein. The record drops October 30th via Kill Rock Stars. It’s the second album Nguyen has self-produced, this time alongside longtime friends Nate Brenner (also a co-writer) and Merrill Garbus of Tune-Yards. Show Me is a suite of lush, expertly, lovingly crafted and powerfully voiced songs that are all different portals into THAO’s kaleidoscopic inner life. They are generous in their candor and vulnerability, and rich with her singularly emotional, incisive lyricism. They are primal and expansive and sexy and vibrant and wrenchingly tender-hearted, all resonant offerings and invitations to the listener to commune. THAO’s ability to span the gamut of genre while maintaining the disarming sincerity and authenticity of her perspective is a rare gift.
The critically acclaimed and well- loved songwriter has been endlessly busy outside the realm of record making since her last lauded album Temple: guest-hosting the iconic Song Exploder Podcast, hosting the PBS TV show Southern Storytellers, developing a musical, film scoring and film starring (with collaborator/ Macarthur Fellow artist Tuan Andrew Nguyen, currently on exhibit in contemporary art institutions), gracing the cover of New York Times’ T magazine, and working on her first book for renowned publisher Graywolf Press. But THAO is a stage- commanding recording artist first and foremost, and she is thrilled to be back in our ears and live in our sights.
Sometimes life starts educating you before you are ready to receive the lesson. In the midst of all her forays into different artistic realms, THAO’s world beyond her busy career underwent a reckoning: divorce, the upending of a home. “I learned that the point of life is not to emerge unscathed, and that I don't want to operate as I always have — masking fear as indifference,” she says.” Show Me is a record of that journey. “This album is a real-time record-keeping of my life evolving into a different relationship with love and desire over the last few years,” Nguyen says.“ For example, I came out publicly years ago but I’ve never really written a song about sex or queer identity. So, that’s in there,” she winks. “Some songs are snapshots of moments I've never felt before. Some are ruminations of what I need to keep, what I want to shear, what I want to move toward.”
In the shearing spirit, out went her long-time band name — Thao and the Get Down Stay Down. “It feels like a more accurate reflection of how much more personal my already personal songwriting has become,” she says of her new project name. “There is something closer to the bone that I'm looking to present and to communicate, and that part is absolutely more vulnerable and requires less words,” she jokes.
The last few years have required a very intense introspection that can only be done alone and have greatly informed her songwriting. “I'm less afraid of space and quiet, and I’m determined to be more direct. Lyrically, I used to value clever turns of phrase, maybe too much. I couldn’t admit that the acrobatics were deflection, signaling fears of the plain truth. I couldn't be as honest and open in my songs about what I wanted in life. I am now.”
Take the opening track, “Fossils,” the album opener, which is THAO reminding herself and all of us to stay open to love.
“Fossils is both a red-flag warning and an encouragement,” she says. “I’m saying I can see it all, I can zoom out and up and see how I and we will have reached the end, frozen in these protective stances. The danger of underliving our lives is real, is in every isolationist choice we make. However, we can continually decide to be different. It takes enormous amounts of work to metabolize fear instead of being based in it. It is so easy to slip into the grooves of self protection.”
“Sick of the Times,” a sure fire anthem of and for these times, was made for community activating and organizing. Featuring vocals from powerhouse punks The Linda Lindas and close friend and collaborator Merrill Garbus of Tune-Yards, the song thrums and seethes and soothes, the infectious synth drum hook leading us into punk rock battle, the vocals uplifting and defiant. “I wanted it to be an anthem that will be used at political rallies, grass roots organizing and mutual aid events, anything that can help us emotionally prepare to activate and to stay politically engaged at all levels, but especially at the local level,” says Nguyen. “We need to keep each other buoyant, to remind ourselves we’ve got the numbers and the imperative.”
“Enemy” undulates with sultry danceable energy; this lucious, groove and hook-laden track is an ode to irresistible attraction to the wrong person. “Ah yes, the pull of ill-advised entanglements," says Nguyen. “I wanted to capture that phenomena when desire for chaos is besting all your better judgement.”
The crackling “Take It Easy” is the most straight-ahead rock song on the record, but the thorny subject matter is anything but linear. “It’s written in the voice of a person I used to be married to,” says Nguyen. “It’s me asking for forgiveness — from her and myself.”
THAO’s songwriting spans and links the intimate and the sweepingly cinematic. “Some of these songs came to life via imagined film scenes I couldn’t stop seeing. “Catch as Catch Can” is from the (hot!) image of bodies surrendering to each other in the ocean, and a remote lighthouse, and the doorway of a cottage by a virulent sea. Just those images, on repeat.” She laughs. “Whatever gets the job done, you know?” The music, a propulsive yet serpentine melody is only enhanced by the inimitable vocals of featured guest Neko Case - one of Nguyen’s all time favorite songwriters and singers - sometimes soaring, sometimes ethereal.
“Nguyen Nguyen Lose Lose” is a new sonic flavor never before heard from THAO, featuring another musician she loves, Adrian Quesada (Black Pumas, Grupo Fantasma) on guitar. THAO produced this track in Austin, Texas at Quesada’s studio, and showcases her own hip hop influenced beat making, captivating guitar chops, and MC flow with a poignant and poetic final prognosis of her estrangement with her father. She says, “This one is another example of assessing what you leave and what you will take forward. I’m trying to get lighter, freer.”
On Show Me, Nguyen finds her center, and lets us all the way in as she gets closer to her freedom. You can tell immediately and throughout, she wants her music to help us get closer to our freedom as well. She believes we can all help each other find home in ourselves, through the outrageously loud or deceptively quiet moments of tumult inherent in everyday life, through all the searching and wondering, at times lost, at times found. “I had and have been craving full embodiment for a very long time,” she says. “I want to try and participate in life and love in ways I've always craved, but was too afraid to try, because it required terrifying things like staying and relaxing into the idea that love might pummel you if it needs to. But I suspect it is worth it for all of us, beautifully so.”
THAO is back, and she is with us.
Apple Music
Bandcamp
Kill Rock Stars
Official Website
Spotify
Tidal
TikTok
YouTube
The plan was always to come back to her first love. THAO, critically acclaimed songwriter and performer, is releasing her first album in six years, and it is a stunning return.
Titled quite appropriately, Show Me is a deeply personal exploration of THAO’s journey toward full embodiment, a flaying of flesh and old burden to reveal the rapturously beating heart therein. The record drops October 30th via Kill Rock Stars. It’s the second album Nguyen has self-produced, this time alongside longtime friends Nate Brenner (also a co-writer) and Merrill Garbus of Tune-Yards. Show Me is a suite of lush, expertly, lovingly crafted and powerfully voiced songs that are all different portals into THAO’s kaleidoscopic inner life. They are generous in their candor and vulnerability, and rich with her singularly emotional, incisive lyricism. They are primal and expansive and sexy and vibrant and wrenchingly tender-hearted, all resonant offerings and invitations to the listener to commune. THAO’s ability to span the gamut of genre while maintaining the disarming sincerity and authenticity of her perspective is a rare gift.
The critically acclaimed and well- loved songwriter has been endlessly busy outside the realm of record making since her last lauded album Temple: guest-hosting the iconic Song Exploder Podcast, hosting the PBS TV show Southern Storytellers, developing a musical, film scoring and film starring (with collaborator/ Macarthur Fellow artist Tuan Andrew Nguyen, currently on exhibit in contemporary art institutions), gracing the cover of New York Times’ T magazine, and working on her first book for renowned publisher Graywolf Press. But THAO is a stage- commanding recording artist first and foremost, and she is thrilled to be back in our ears and live in our sights.
Sometimes life starts educating you before you are ready to receive the lesson. In the midst of all her forays into different artistic realms, THAO’s world beyond her busy career underwent a reckoning: divorce, the upending of a home. “I learned that the point of life is not to emerge unscathed, and that I don't want to operate as I always have — masking fear as indifference,” she says.” Show Me is a record of that journey. “This album is a real-time record-keeping of my life evolving into a different relationship with love and desire over the last few years,” Nguyen says.“ For example, I came out publicly years ago but I’ve never really written a song about sex or queer identity. So, that’s in there,” she winks. “Some songs are snapshots of moments I've never felt before. Some are ruminations of what I need to keep, what I want to shear, what I want to move toward.”
In the shearing spirit, out went her long-time band name — Thao and the Get Down Stay Down. “It feels like a more accurate reflection of how much more personal my already personal songwriting has become,” she says of her new project name. “There is something closer to the bone that I'm looking to present and to communicate, and that part is absolutely more vulnerable and requires less words,” she jokes.
The last few years have required a very intense introspection that can only be done alone and have greatly informed her songwriting. “I'm less afraid of space and quiet, and I’m determined to be more direct. Lyrically, I used to value clever turns of phrase, maybe too much. I couldn’t admit that the acrobatics were deflection, signaling fears of the plain truth. I couldn't be as honest and open in my songs about what I wanted in life. I am now.”
Take the opening track, “Fossils,” the album opener, which is THAO reminding herself and all of us to stay open to love.
“Fossils is both a red-flag warning and an encouragement,” she says. “I’m saying I can see it all, I can zoom out and up and see how I and we will have reached the end, frozen in these protective stances. The danger of underliving our lives is real, is in every isolationist choice we make. However, we can continually decide to be different. It takes enormous amounts of work to metabolize fear instead of being based in it. It is so easy to slip into the grooves of self protection.”
“Sick of the Times,” a sure fire anthem of and for these times, was made for community activating and organizing. Featuring vocals from powerhouse punks The Linda Lindas and close friend and collaborator Merrill Garbus of Tune-Yards, the song thrums and seethes and soothes, the infectious synth drum hook leading us into punk rock battle, the vocals uplifting and defiant. “I wanted it to be an anthem that will be used at political rallies, grass roots organizing and mutual aid events, anything that can help us emotionally prepare to activate and to stay politically engaged at all levels, but especially at the local level,” says Nguyen. “We need to keep each other buoyant, to remind ourselves we’ve got the numbers and the imperative.”
“Enemy” undulates with sultry danceable energy; this lucious, groove and hook-laden track is an ode to irresistible attraction to the wrong person. “Ah yes, the pull of ill-advised entanglements," says Nguyen. “I wanted to capture that phenomena when desire for chaos is besting all your better judgement.”
The crackling “Take It Easy” is the most straight-ahead rock song on the record, but the thorny subject matter is anything but linear. “It’s written in the voice of a person I used to be married to,” says Nguyen. “It’s me asking for forgiveness — from her and myself.”
THAO’s songwriting spans and links the intimate and the sweepingly cinematic. “Some of these songs came to life via imagined film scenes I couldn’t stop seeing. “Catch as Catch Can” is from the (hot!) image of bodies surrendering to each other in the ocean, and a remote lighthouse, and the doorway of a cottage by a virulent sea. Just those images, on repeat.” She laughs. “Whatever gets the job done, you know?” The music, a propulsive yet serpentine melody is only enhanced by the inimitable vocals of featured guest Neko Case - one of Nguyen’s all time favorite songwriters and singers - sometimes soaring, sometimes ethereal.
“Nguyen Nguyen Lose Lose” is a new sonic flavor never before heard from THAO, featuring another musician she loves, Adrian Quesada (Black Pumas, Grupo Fantasma) on guitar. THAO produced this track in Austin, Texas at Quesada’s studio, and showcases her own hip hop influenced beat making, captivating guitar chops, and MC flow with a poignant and poetic final prognosis of her estrangement with her father. She says, “This one is another example of assessing what you leave and what you will take forward. I’m trying to get lighter, freer.”
On Show Me, Nguyen finds her center, and lets us all the way in as she gets closer to her freedom. You can tell immediately and throughout, she wants her music to help us get closer to our freedom as well. She believes we can all help each other find home in ourselves, through the outrageously loud or deceptively quiet moments of tumult inherent in everyday life, through all the searching and wondering, at times lost, at times found. “I had and have been craving full embodiment for a very long time,” she says. “I want to try and participate in life and love in ways I've always craved, but was too afraid to try, because it required terrifying things like staying and relaxing into the idea that love might pummel you if it needs to. But I suspect it is worth it for all of us, beautifully so.”
THAO is back, and she is with us.