Fearless Records · Released: June 26, 2026
There comes a point in a band’s life when proving stops and telling begins. The Pretty Reckless have reached it. Dear God, their fifth studio album and their first with entirely new material since 2021’s Death By Rock And Roll, doesn’t sound like a band still trying to convince anyone of anything. It sounds like four people who know exactly who they are – and who left the masks at the door this time.
Taylor Momsen puts it plainly enough herself: no hiding behind characters or concepts this time around. Doubt, anger, hope, unanswered questions – it’s all on the table. And you can hear it. Where earlier records often put a narrator with attitude front and centre, Momsen writes here with an almost diaristic directness about loss, faith, and carrying on when nothing underneath you holds anymore.
She produced the album herself, alongside guitarist Ben Phillips and Jonathan Wyman. The foundation is the band’s familiar hard rock – the heavy riffs, Momsen’s voice tipping effortlessly between raw force and brittle vulnerability. But Dear God doesn’t sit still in the familiar. The record pushes outward, both emotionally and sonically, without fleeing into a reinvention nobody asked for.
Anyone who followed the singles already knows the range. „When I Wake Up“ – now the band’s ninth number one on the Mainstream Rock chart – is a raw, almost punk-sharpened slab about a dream turning into a nightmare: a life of excess as a rollercoaster doomed to crash, while you’re the last one to see the bend coming. „Love Me“ leans instead on the band’s explosive guitar work, emotionally charged and carrying that signature blend of grit and grandeur. The title track „Dear God“ and focus song „About You“ then twist the screw further toward intimacy.
Across its fifty-odd minutes, Dear God holds a balance that’s anything but a given: weight and introspection, spectacle and stillness, darkness and a flicker of hope. It’s not a record you leave running in the background. It’s one where you put the headphones on and give it time.
What’s left is an album from a band in full command of its craft. No chasing trends, no identity crisis – instead, the thing The Pretty Reckless do best anyway, only dug deeper and meant more honestly. Dear God ranks among the strongest work the band has ever delivered. And it proves that Taylor Momsen and her bandmates remain one of the few acts in modern rock with something real to say.
Tracklist (excerpt):
- Life Evermore Pt. 2
- For I Am Death
- When I Wake Up
- Love Me
- Dragonfire
- Dear God
- Life Evermore Pt. 3
- About You
- Spell On You
The band then hits the road: the Dear God Tour kicks off July 10 in Raleigh, North Carolina, runs across North America for three months, and reaches Europe from November 9 – opening in Madrid and wrapping up December 3 in Glasgow.