American singer-songwriter and author Claire Cronin has announced her new album, The Bruise, due out on 9 October via Ordinal Records/A Moth Object. It marks her first LP since 2021's Bloodless and continues her uneasy, folk-inflected style drawing on doom metal and drone influences.

The record was made largely at home in Berkeley with her husband and regular collaborator Ezra Buchla, with occasional sessions in Oakland and Los Angeles studios, and features guest contributions from Julia Holter and Deerhoof's John Dieterich. Cronin has shared the lead single "Black Water", a six-minute acoustic track performed solely by her and Buchla, which she says was informed by a frightening childbirth experience and themes of inherited pain. The nine-track album also includes songs such as "Silent Night", "Poison Arrow" and "House In The Pines".