The Swell Season Mull Past Selves On New Single

Ahead of an extensive 2025 tour, Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová are back with a new Swell Season single, “People We Used To Be.” It follows the Oscar-winning duo’s 2023 single “The Answer Is Yes,” which was recorded at Irglová and husband Sturla Mio Thorisson’s Iceland-based studio, Masterkey.

The accompanying Prague-set video for “People We Used To Be” was directed by Radim Vanous and captures Hansard and Irglová busking, as they did in Once.

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“It’s a song about trying to reconcile with what feels like an end of an era and allowing one’s self to mourn the people we used to be, while choosing to fight for the person we love and the life we built with them,” Irglová offers. “It is a song of defiance and determination as much as heart aching nostalgia.”

More news about new Swell Season music is expected in the next few weeks; the group’s last album, Strict Joy, was released in 2009.

Hansard and Irglová were in New York this week for a series of promotional events, including an impromptu performance at tiny East Village bar Scratcher that featured guest turns by musicians from the theatrical touring cast of Once and photographer Danny Clinch on harmonica. Hansard will also perform tonight (March 26) at the multi-artist Patti Smith tribute People Have the Power at Carnegie Hall.

The Swell Season’s tour begins May 13 in Amsterdam and runs through Sept. 24 in Seattle.

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