Kate “Babyshakes” Dillon says the new Full Flower Moon Band single began as a simple instrumental before becoming an “unnerving battle cry”, while the accompanying video connects her childhood performances with a darker present.
by Paul Cashmere
Full Flower Moon Band have released their new single and video ‘Endless Summer’, a darkly charged first preview of their fourth album After Dark, due February 26, 2027 through Impressed Recordings. The Brisbane five-piece will also support Foo Fighters at their Australian shows in November, taking their new material to some of the biggest stages of their career.
The title ‘Endless Summer’ suggests warmth and escape, but Kate “Babyshakes” Dillon describes something considerably more unsettled. The Full Flower Moon Band leader says the song is “the voice of a manic episode”, built around what she calls “hopeless, frantic optimism”.
“What began as a simple instrumental track is now unleashed onto the world as an unnerving battle cry,” Dillon says.
The contradiction sits at the centre of the song. Its chorus imagines an endless summer whenever the sun comes out, while the emotional landscape behind those words is considerably darker. Dillon says the song reflects the rapid movement between life’s highs and lows, and the emotional distance that can follow.
That tension is carried into the video, which combines stark black-and-white images of New York with bursts of Full Flower Moon Band performing live. Interspersed through the footage are images of Dillon performing as a child, creating a visual connection between the young musician who first stepped onto a stage and the performer she has become.
“It gives me the feeling of being nostalgic for something that happened only moments ago,” Dillon says. “When life’s highs and lows move so quickly, you end up feeling nothing at all.”
The video therefore becomes more than a performance document. It places Dillon’s past and present in the same frame, reflecting the central idea behind After Dark.
The album was written during a single month in New York after Dillon received the Grant McLennan Fellowship from Q Music. Away from the Brisbane environment in which Full Flower Moon Band had developed, she used the opportunity to reassess what she had built and where she wanted to take it.
According to Dillon, the question was not whether she should abandon the band or reclaim something that had been lost. Instead, she was considering whether the life she had created still served her, and whether she had been continuing with it partly to keep other people happy.
That distinction informs the album’s title and its broader perspective. After Dark is framed as an attempt to give herself permission to imagine again, rather than a return to an earlier version of Full Flower Moon Band.
The record follows Megaflower, the band’s third album, which was released in 2024 and debuted at number one on the ARIA Australian Album Chart. The first vinyl pressing sold out within a week, while the album subsequently received Album of the Year recognition from The Triffid.
Full Flower Moon Band’s profile has also expanded beyond Australia. Iggy Pop has played ‘Roadie’ and ‘Illegal Things’ on BBC Radio 6 Music, while the band’s music has received support from Double J, triple j, KEXP, PBS, 2SER and 4ZZZ. Their songs have also featured in Made In Chelsea and Netflix’s Heartbreak High.
The group began as Dillon’s bedroom project before evolving into a permanent five-piece featuring Marli Smales on bass and backing vocals, Luke Hanson on drums, Christian Driscoll on guitar and Caleb Widener on guitar. The current lineup emerged around 2022’s Diesel Forever, giving the band its distinctive triple-guitar configuration.
Live performance remains central to the Full Flower Moon Band experience, and November will put that reputation into a substantially larger setting. The group will support Foo Fighters at Brisbane and Townsville shows, bringing the band’s theatrical live presence and new material to stadium audiences.
For Dillon, however, ‘Endless Summer’ is ultimately about the internal tension behind the performance. The song takes an apparently optimistic phrase and turns it into something more ambiguous, establishing a darker starting point for After Dark when the album is released in February.
The new record represents another stage in a progression that began with a private studio project and has developed into one of Brisbane’s most distinctive rock bands. ‘Endless Summer’ suggests that the next chapter will not simply revisit what Full Flower Moon Band have already achieved, but examine where Dillon wants the project to go next.
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