Australian multi-hyphenate artist Emma Louise and Grammy-winning producer and songwriter Flume team up for a 10-track collaborative album, DUMB, set for release August 22. A first taste of the new music, “Easy Goodbye,” will be unveiled Friday, with the album also available for pre-order.
Longtime friends and past collaborators—most notably on “Hollow” from Flume’s 2022 album Palaces—the pair reunited in the studio last year for a session that quickly grew into an album. DUMB was built together from the ground up in regional northern New South Wales where they both live and create, fully co-written by Emma Louise and Flume. Emma Louise finds new edges with this album, wrapping her intimate songwriting in Flume’s glitchy, wide-screen production.
Emma says:
“The title DUMB is loaded with weight for me. Growing up undiagnosed neurodivergent, I often felt dumb—struggling at school, forgetting things, silencing myself to fit in. In the studio, whenever we got stuck, Harley and I would laugh and say ‘make it dumb’ to stop overthinking. It worked every time. At first, naming the album DUMB felt irreverent and freeing, but later I realised how deeply it connected to my own fear of being seen as stupid and unworthy. This album is me reclaiming that word, letting go of shame, and promising myself I’ll never abandon my voice again.”
DUMB follows Flume’s collaborative EP with JPEGMAFIA, We Live In A Society, which marked his return from a two-year hiatus. Flume is now busy working on his next project, a new studio album.
Emma Louise is known for a career of continuous reinvention. The North Queensland-born artist has spent over a decade exploring the edges of songwriting and sound, shifting fluidly through phases of introspection, abstraction, and experimentation. From her debut album Vs Head Vs Heart, through the emotional directness of Supercry, to the radical shift of Lilac Everything—where she pitch-shifted her vocals down an octave and reimagined her identity as a singer entirely—Emma has always been an artist who follows instinct over expectation. She also paints, sculpts and creates across a myriad of mediums, and her music has always mirrored that same physical, handmade quality. With DUMB, she arrives somewhere new—not letting go of who she is but surrendering fully to Flume’s compositional world and following it as far as it would take her.
Flume is a Grammy-winning artist, producer and songwriter who exploded into global consciousness in 2011 when his early release “Sleepless” captivated Australia and quickly spread around the world. Since then, he’s released three widely acclaimed studio albums, three cult favorite mixtapes and a handful of EPs, and won countless accolades including 13 Arias, two Triple J Hottest 100 #1s and a Grammy for Best Dance/Electronic Album. He is a global headliner who has played lineup-topping sets at festivals worldwide including Coachella, Lollapalooza, Osheaga, Outside Lands, Japan’s Summersonic, Italy’s C2C and many more.
EMMA LOUISE AND FLUME—DUMB
1. All Of The Worlds
2. Monsoon
3. Shine, Glow, Glisten
4. Feel Ur Love
5. Easy Goodbye
6. Stay
7. Whenever You Want
8. Homicide
9. Brand New
10. Truce
