Fire Records is delaying the release of the first new Throwing Muses album in seven years “given the situation in our industry” brought on by the coronavirus. The 10-song Sun Racket, the band’s 10th record overall, had been due out May 22 but now is scheduled to be released Sept. 4.

As we reported earlier this month, the Throwing Muses will release Sun Racket — their 10th studio album, and first in seven years — on the Fire Records label this May. Now you can get your first taste of Kristin Hersh and Co.’s new music in the form of lead-off single and album opener “Dark Blue,” a gnarled rocker that you can stream here.

The Throwing Muses will release Sun Racket — their 10th studio album, and the college-rock favorites’ first in seven years — on the Fire Records label this May, bandleader Kristin Hersh announced this week in the latest edition of her newsletter. Full details and Kristin Hersh solo tour dates here.

New Zealand indie-pop legends The Chills — the Martin Phillipps-led group that long has carried the banner for the Dunedin sound — will return in September with a new album titled Snow Bound, and you can already get an earful of two songs off new record. Stream them both right here.

As she prepares to head off to England to play the Robert Smith-curated Meltdown festival, Throwing Muses frontwoman Kristin Hersh is offering fans the first taste of her upcoming solo album Possible Dust Clouds: “LAX,” her first new material in two years. Hear the new song right here.

Fire Records next spring will follow up its collection of the first four albums by The Jazz Butcher, Pat Fish’s long-running U.K. indie-pop outfit, with a new box set called The Violent Years that compiles the next four LPs, all originally released on Creation Records between 1988 and 1991.