Austra blessed us with new music at the end of 2025 when she dropped her fifth studio album Chin Up Buttercup in November — five years after the release of Hirudin. The Toronto artist stopped by the Valentine Distilling Co. Studio at 100.7 Ferndale Radio before her Jan. 14 show at the Magic Bag in Ferndale.
Austra, which is the middle name of Katie Stelmanis, describes Chin Up Buttercup as a breakup record. The cover art for the album features Austra, which is not a first, but conveys her in a way that can be described as beautifully heartbreaking.
“There’s like a little bit of grief, a little bit of anger, a little bit of acceptance, a little bit of denial. What we were trying to capture with that cover was just like the internal chaos,” said Austra. “The whole concept of Chin Up Buttercup is attempting to kind of appear normal and stable while going through this internal chaos. So…the cover is like, ‘Yeah, she’s just like trying to be normal, but obviously is not.'”
Austra continues: “Basically for that shoot…I like blasted Puccini opera and fake cried for a whole bunch of time and we just took a million photos. We just used a bunch of different ones for different things. I was actually inspired for the cover by…I don’t know if you’ve seen like these makeup tutorials on like YouTube or TikTok or whatever where these girls are doing like fake-crying makeup? Where the girls will…do makeup that makes them look like they have a cold or like that they’ve been crying? And I was like, ‘I want that.’ So we did the makeup like that.”
Watch the entire interview with Austra above, where she also shares what it was like working with Detroit techno legend Kevin Saunderson, touring the U.S. as a non-American while controversial ICE raids continue, and more.
Austra’s fifth studio album Chin Up Buttercup is available now via Domino Recording Company. She released the short film “Chin Up Buttercup: The Movie” earlier this month as a visual companion piece for the record.
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