A Perfect Circle have returned with “Starless,” their first new song in eight years, giving fans a fresh sign of life from one of Maynard James Keenan’s most beloved projects. The track arrived on May 27, 2026, and comes after the band’s last full-length release, Eat the Elephant in 2018. It also adds another busy chapter to a packed year for Keenan, who has already released Puscifer’s Normal Isn’t.
The song does not just arrive quietly. Loudwire describes “Starless” as built around a trance-like melody and a tense, twisting rhythm, with Keenan delivering a forceful vocal performance over a riff-heavy arrangement. Lyrically, the song appears to wrestle with power, authority, manipulation, moral collapse, and the search for a way back through confusion and fear.
Keenan said he was “absolutely chuffed” to debut the song onstage in the U.K., and added that APC songs tend to grow once they are played live. That fits the band’s pattern over the years: studio versions can be precise and layered, but the material often opens up and gains new weight in front of an audience.
The track was recorded at Billy Howerdel’s Lankershim Ranch Studio, produced by Howerdel, mixed by Matty Green, and features drummer Josh Freese. Howerdel said some songs sit and get reshaped for years, but every once in a while one comes together fast, almost as if it had been waiting in the room all along.
That kind of language makes “Starless” feel less like a random one-off and more like a carefully placed return. A Perfect Circle have not issued a full-length album since 2018, so any new song carries extra weight. Even before the new tour starts, “Starless” signals that the band is not just revisiting the past — it is actively adding to its story again.
The release also arrives just ahead of A Perfect Circle’s 2026 European and U.K. tour, which kicks off on June 3 in London. That run gives the band a big live platform to introduce the song to audiences who have been waiting years for new APC material.
For longtime fans, “Starless” lands like the start of a new phase. It keeps the band’s familiar atmosphere intact while sounding tense, direct, and alive. After eight years without a new APC song, the return feels deliberate — and judging by the first reaction, it sounds like the band picked the right moment to step back into the light.
