Nick Murphy, better known to many as Chet Faker, has announced a new studio album, A Love For Strangers, due February 13, 2026 on BMG, and has released a buoyant lead single, This Time For Real, to whet appetites. The single arrives with a playful, kinetic video that follows Murphy as Chet Faker tearing through New York City by jet ski, sports car and pedicab, a jaunty visual that matches the song’s anthemic, self-aware charm.
This Time For Real finds Murphy at his most immediately catchy, pairing an earworm chorus with lyrics that tip a hat to the pressures and pleasures of artistic success, all delivered in that warm, slightly sardonic voice that made him a global surprise after Built On Glass. The track’s swagger-free confidence is a neat scene setter for A Love For Strangers, a record the announcement frames as Murphy returning to the restless curiosity that birthed Chet Faker in the first place.
A Love For Strangers follows Hotel Surrender from 2021, and it arrives after a period of reflection marked by the 10 year anniversary of Murphy’s breakthrough, Built On Glass.
That 2014 record vaulted Chet Faker into the spotlight, blending soulful songwriting, electronic textures and a beautiful looseness that made songs like Smoke And Retribution and Talk Is Cheap fixtures across playlists and festival stages. Since then Murphy has alternated between releases under his stage name and work under his own name, including the more experimental instrumental Music For Silence, plus high-profile collaborations with artists such as Flume and Marcus Marr, showing a restless creative life that refuses to settle.
The announcement frames A Love For Strangers as a coming-full-circle moment, a project born of personal rediscovery and the recalibration that followed a decade of attention. Murphy’s trajectory is unusual, in that he has repeatedly shifted between the persona and the person, testing how far a stage name can carry new ideas, then stepping back to experiment away from expectation. That tug-of-war between identity and invention is audible in This Time For Real, which balances anthemic hooks with cheeky self-reference, and promises an album that looks outward, while reckoning with the burden of looking back.
Fans will recognise familiar strands in Murphy’s approach, the marriage of classic songwriting instincts with modern production smarts, but the tease suggests A Love For Strangers will also nudge into fresh territory. If Built On Glass announced him to the world, and Hotel Surrender broadened his palette, this next record sounds like an attempt to reconcile the two impulses, to make songs that hold immediate appeal, while rewarding listeners who follow the twists in his career.
The single’s video, directed to capture the manic joy of movement across a city renowned for extremes, underlines Murphy’s desire to reintroduce the Chet Faker character as both wry and wide-eyed, a creator who is aware of his own mythology, but not beholden to it. With a release date set for February 13, 2026, the coming months will bring more detail, and likely further singles, but for now This Time For Real offers a compelling, optimistic glimpse of what’s to come.
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