Luvcat has shared a new single, ‘Vampire At The Beach’. You can listen to it below.
The track will appear on the Liverpool singer-songwriter and NME 100 alumni‘s upcoming EP of “vampiric love songs and murderous ballads”, ‘Lovebites’, out May 22 via AWAL. Pre-order/pre-save here.
“I once had this ghostly-looking lover who had this unsettling hold over me,” explained Luvcat of the inspiration behind her latest single. “I was almost waiting for him to bite my neck. He truly had me clamped between his teeth.”
She continued: “We were watching a [Federico] Fellini film and seeing all these golden bodies dripping with sweat on the silky rocks of an Italian beach. I was just thinking, I can’t imagine being on a summer holiday with you. You’re a vampire.”
In the eerie, skeletal and piano-led first verse, Luvcat sings: “Had dreams of Anacapri/ When I fell asleep with a film on TV/ Fellini’s golden bodies/ Lapped by the sea like melted ice cream.”
Later, she describes her partner as “milky-skinned and amber-eyed“, adding: “Think I loved you since the day you died.”
The theatrical final part of ‘Vampire At The Beach’ features the lines: ‘”I wanna be your Lady Madonna/ Waltz wooden through the squares together/ Swear it was the second I saw ya/ I knew, that you/ Would fuck me up forever/ Fuck me up forever/ Fuck me up forever.”
A beach-set official video – inspired by Tim Burton’s Sweeney Todd… – is set to premiere on YouTube at 5pm BST today (Friday April 24). Tune in above, where you can also check out the lyric video.
‘Lovebites’ will pick up where Luvcat’s debut album, 2025’s ‘Vicious Delicious’, left off. However, her material is said to have taken a “darker turn” with “deeper stories for fans to sink their teeth into”.
The EP also includes the song ‘Silent Killer’, which Luvcat debuted at a show in London earlier this year. This was inspired by an almost-fatal carbon monoxide leak at the artist’s flat in Camberwell.
“It nearly killed me and two of my bandmates. We’d had a bit of a wild night. Instead of staying up into the early hours like always, everyone had gone to sleep in a sort of delirious stupor. We had to drag each other out, already half-conscious thanks to the leaking boiler,” she remembered.
“There was also black mould which was slowly secretly poisoning us all. The flat was magical at first but then I think it wanted us out. We were losing our minds a little. I was thinking about how the monoxide and mould could send you so mad that you do something really, really bad.”
The EP will contain ‘He’s My Man (The Anniversary)’ featuring John Cooper Clarke and ‘Electric Chair’ featuring Pete Doherty, too.
Luvcat is due to open for The Waterboys this summer, and will perform at Isle Of Wight Festival, TRNSMT, Boardmasters and Neighbourhood Weekender. She has previously supported The Libertines and The Last Dinner Party, and played last year’s Glastonbury and Reading & Leeds.
Speaking to NME for a Cover interview last autumn, Luvcat discussed the theme of dark romance on her debut album, and how she wanted to keep some mystery around herself as an artist.
“I’m drawn to artists that I don’t know everything about; there’s more intrigue there,” she said. “I just wanted to slowly weave this intoxicating world and hopefully get a few people drunk on it.”
Luvcat put together an accompanying ‘All Hallows’ Eve’ playlist for NME, with songs by The Cramps, The Cure, Nina Simone, My Chemical Romance and more.