Paramore’s Hayley Williams has teased the band’s return with new music next year, five years on from its last album, 2017’s After Laughter. 

In a newsletter sent yesterday (November 26), the musician thanked fans for their “incredible support these last couple years”, which have seen her release her debut solo album, Petals for Armor, and its follow-up FLOWERS for VASES / descansos.

“I know we didn’t get to properly come together to sing and vent and sweat it all out, but I do think that Petals and descansos lived exactly the lives they were meant to,” she adds, before hinting at the band’s imminent comeback: “Besides, Paramore can’t be ‘on a break’ forever now can we?”

In her conclusion to the newsletter, Williams also suggests a potential timeline for the new material, writing: “I love y’all. See you sometime next year?”

Despite an absence of official Paramore releases since After Laughter, the bandmates have remained close collaborators. Elsewhere in the letter, she reflects on their influence on her solo material, writing: “The guys were by my side nearly the entire process. If not actually working on the project with me then cheering me on.”

“I even got to write with a few friends outside of – but very much connected to – Paramore,” she explains. “(They) taught me so much and gave me so much to be inspired by.”

Williams previously dropped a vague hint that a new Paramore album is in the works back in April, when she posted a screengrab of messages from the group’s drummer, Zac Farro, reading: “paramore 6.”

In February, meanwhile, she suggested that she was moving away from solo material to focus on the band again, when asked if there are songs left over from descansos that could emerge in the future. “There are more songs, yeah,” she said. “But I’m not planning on another solo album. And I’m not sure if they’d be great for Paramore. I’m ready for the next Paramore album. Let’s go.”

Revisit Dazed’s 2020 interview with Hayley Williams — in which she discusses how trauma, femininity, and therapy helped form Petals for Armor — here.