Boy Harsher signs to Atlantic Records, announces ‘Get Mean’
Boy Harsher signs to Atlantic Records and announces ‘Get Mean’, out September 18, 2026, with new single ‘Hard Beat’ and a North American tour.
Boy Harsher
American darkwave duo Boy Harsher has signed to Atlantic Records and announced a new album, Get Mean, due September 18, 2026. The twelve-track release is the duo’s first full-length since the 2022 film and soundtrack “The Runner,” and their major-label debut. Alongside the announcement, Jae Matthews and Augustus Muller shared a new single, “Hard Beat,” with a self-directed video.
“Get Mean” was recorded across eight locations in the United States, Mexico and Italy. The album traces Matthews and Muller’s process after the pair, formerly a couple, ended their romantic relationship in early 2024, a period that also brought family loss and creative uncertainty before the duo decided to continue Boy Harsher together. Matthews describes the record as “what I had to give during the most extreme period of my life.”
Across its twelve tracks, “Get Mean” pairs Boy Harsher’s established coldwave propulsion with detuned pads, synth leads, pedal-steel parts, new wave guitar and phone-recorded fragments gathered during Matthews’s travels through West Texas, the Pacific Northwest and South Florida.
Boy Harsher ‘Get Mean’ tracklist
- Ronny
- Jeans
- Break Me
- Tough Luck (When You Don’t Call)
- Faulty
- Coming Home
- Hard Beat
- Ice Pick (Walk Away)
- Ivy’s Spiral
- Pray 4 Me
- Falling ~
- Bleed
“Jeans,” released in June 2026, was the first track shared from the album. “Hard Beat” is the second single, built around a bass-synth figure, a steady kick drum and Matthews’s vocal. Its video, directed by Boy Harsher with cinematography by Owen Smith-Clark, follows two characters through a nighttime highway drive intercut with a closed-circuit surveillance narrative shot inside a tiled room.
“Get Mean” is available to pre-order and pre-save on Bandcamp via Nude Club Records, the duo’s own imprint, through Atlantic Records.
Boy Harsher 2026 tour dates
Boy Harsher will support “Get Mean” with a North American headlining run beginning September 25 in Hudson, New York, followed by European and UK dates in November and December. The tour was first announced in June 2026 as “The Heartbreak Tour”; several North American dates are sold out. Support acts on select shows include Choir Boy, Evanora Unlimited, True Blue and Kassie Krut.
- September 25 – Hudson, NY – Basilica Hudson
- September 27 – Boston, MA – Royale
- September 29 – Montreal, QC – MTELUS
- September 30 – Toronto, ON – Danforth Music Hall
- October 1 – Detroit, MI – Majestic Theatre
- October 2 – Chicago, IL – Metro (sold out)
- October 3 – Chicago, IL – Metro (sold out)
- October 4 – Minneapolis, MN – Varsity Theater
- October 6 – Denver, CO – Summit
- October 9 – Portland, OR – Revolution Hall (sold out)
- October 10 – Portland, OR – Revolution Hall (sold out)
- October 11 – Seattle, WA – The Showbox (sold out)
- October 12 – Seattle, WA – The Showbox
- October 13 – Vancouver, BC – The Pearl (sold out)
- October 15 – Oakland, CA – Fox Theater
- October 16 – Los Angeles, CA – Hollywood Palladium (sold out)
- October 17 – Del Mar, CA – The Sound
- October 18 – Santa Ana, CA – Observatory Festival Grounds (sold out)
- October 20 – Las Vegas, NV – House of Blues
- October 21 – Phoenix, AZ – The Van Buren
- October 24 – Fort Worth, TX – Sick New World – DFW
- October 26 – New Orleans, LA – Republic NOLA
- October 27 – Atlanta, GA – Variety Playhouse
- October 28 – Asheville, NC – The Orange Peel
- October 30 – Washington, DC – The Howard Theatre
- October 31 – Philadelphia, PA – Making Time
- November 5 – New York, NY – Knockdown Center
- November 14 – Lyon, France – Le Transbordeur
- November 15 – Paris, France – Bataclan
- November 16 – Strasbourg, France – La Laiterie
- November 17 – Frankfurt, Germany – Zoom
- November 18 – Lausanne, Switzerland – Docks
- November 19 – Munich, Germany – Kesselhaus
- November 20 – Vienna, Austria – Ottakringer Brauerei
- November 21 – Leipzig, Germany – Felsenkeller
- November 22 – Berlin, Germany – Columbiahalle
- November 24 – Hamburg, Germany – Gruenspan
- November 25 – Cologne, Germany – Essigfabrik
- November 26 – Amsterdam, Netherlands – Paradiso
- November 27 – Lille, France – L’Aeronef
- November 28 – Nantes, France – Warehouse
- November 29 – London, UK – Roundhouse
- December 1 – Manchester, UK – Ritz
- December 2 – Glasgow, UK – SWG3 TV Studio
- December 3 – Bristol, UK – Bristol Electric at SWX
- December 4 – Antwerp, Belgium – De Roma
About Boy Harsher
Boy Harsher formed in 2014 in Savannah, Georgia, where vocalist Jae Matthews and producer Augustus Muller met while studying film. The pair first worked together as Teen Dreamz in 2013, pairing Matthews’s spoken word with Muller’s electronics, before renaming the project Boy Harsher and releasing the home-recorded EP “Lesser Man” the same year; the track “Pain” spread widely online and became an early calling card for the duo. They later relocated to Northampton, Massachusetts.
The duo released their debut album “Yr Body Is Nothing” in 2016 through DKA Records, followed by the “Country Girl” EP in 2017. In 2018 they founded their own label, Nude Club, and reissued earlier material through it. Their second album, “Careful,” arrived on February 1, 2019 via Nude Club Records, with a companion remix collection, “Careful Remixes, etc.,” issued the same year. Side-Line reviewed “Careful” in September 2019, noting the record’s 80s electro-pop and cold-wave influences and rating it 8½.
In January 2022, Matthews and Muller released their directorial debut, the short film “The Runner,” with an accompanying soundtrack, and followed it with festival appearances including Primavera Sound, Roadburn and Coachella. In November 2024, the duo featured on Pet Shop Boys’ double A-side single “New London Boy / All The Young Dudes,” while Muller continued his side project Safe Mind with Cooper B. Handy. Boy Harsher are also directing and scoring an upcoming feature-length horror thriller, “The Lonely Woman,” starring Chloe Sevigny, FKA twigs, Sturgill Simpson, Will Oldham and Jake Weary.
In June 2026, Boy Harsher announced “The Heartbreak Tour,” their first extended North American headlining run since the 2022 “The Runner” cycle. With “Get Mean,” announced in July 2026 and due September 18 via Atlantic Records, that tour becomes the album’s launch run, extending into Europe and the UK through December.
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