Boy & Bear have released their sixth studio album, Tripping Over Time, a record that navigates memory, maturity and melodic craft. The independent album spans 11 tracks, and it foregrounds the band’s knack for sunlit indie pop and intimate storytelling. The focus track, Ancestors, is a hushed centrepiece, pairing pastoral reflection with emotional clarity.
Tripping Over Time opens with its title track, which sets a reflective, melodic tone. Where Does Life Begin follows, posing questions about direction and growth. Vertigo, Thunder and Lost Control explore change, fragility and the compromises of modern life. Love Has Been Too Good To Me and All These Years offer tender accounts of love and endurance, while Movie closes the record in a dreamlike shimmer.
Singer and lyricist Dave Hosking says Tripping Over Time celebrates the new wisdoms of age, it wrestles with the pull of youth, and it seeks peace in who we become. The album mixes acoustic intimacy and pop songcraft, and it retains the harmonies and folk-tinged textures that defined the band’s early work.
To mark the album release, Boy & Bear will headline a major run of concerts in 2026, beginning with a landmark performance at the Sydney Opera House Forecourt this Sunday, 14 December 2025. That show features special guests Hollow Coves and Darcie Haven, and it caps off a year that has seen the band reconnect with fans around Australia.
The band has also announced major capital city dates in May 2026, including Fremantle, Adelaide, Brisbane and Melbourne. The schedule signals one of the band’s biggest headline tours to date, and the group say they are excited to perform on larger stages with a broad cross section of collaborators, including The Dreggs, Bears Den, Cloud Control and RAGEFLOWER.
Formed in Sydney in 2009, Boy & Bear grew from Dave Hosking’s solo work into a five-piece featuring Killian Gavin, Tim Hart, Jon Hart and David Symes. Their debut, Moonfire, arrived in 2011 and reached No. 2 on the ARIA Albums Chart. Harlequin Dream and Limit Of Love both hit No. 1, cementing the band’s commercial and critical footprint.
Moonfire brought mainstream attention and five ARIA Awards, while Harlequin Dream and later records consolidated a reputation for harmony-rich, guitar-forward songwriting. The band’s catalogue includes Suck On Light and the self-titled Boy & Bear album from 2023, and they have consistently sold out tours and played high-profile supports for international acts.
Tripping Over Time finds Boy & Bear balancing nostalgia with forward motion, an approach that suits a band now more comfortable with its identity. The album’s themes of time, change and domestic life are familiar, yet they are expressed with renewed subtlety and melodic assurance. For long-term fans, the record extends the band’s signature strengths, and for new listeners, it offers an accessible entry point.
Dave Hosking describes Ancestors as a song about fighting for relationships and the instinct to reconnect, recalling a moment beside a vegetable patch that led to a personal revelation. That candidness anchors the album, and it illustrates why Boy & Bear remain compelling storytellers.
Tripping Over Time is out now, and the accompanying tour promises some of the band’s largest headline shows yet. The forecourt performance at the Sydney Opera House is a highlight, and the 2026 capital city dates underline a renewed national momentum.
DATES
Sunday 14 December 2025, Sydney Opera House Forecourt, Sydney,
Friday 1 May 2026, Fremantle Arts Centre South Lawn, Fremantle.
Saturday 2 May 2026, Thebarton Theatre, Adelaide.
Friday 8 May 2026, Riverstage, Brisbane.
Friday 15 May 2026, Hamer Hall, Melbourne.
Tickets on sale Tuesday 16 December 2025 from boyandbear.com.
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