Whitney is now a month away from the release of their latest album, Small Talk. Before that, they’ll launch a massive tour that runs into 2026. Before even that, today (October 8), they have a new song to share: The characteristically tender and bright “Damage.”

The group’s Julien Ehrlich says of the song:

“We were searching for the sentiment of ‘Damage’ for a while. In hindsight, I think we were trying to avoid writing a breakup song, and in the process ignoring what the song was calling for. I remember once we finally got the first chorus ironed out we were able to see that it was ok to write another song about heartbreak as long as we completed it in a way that felt unique and undeniably ‘Whitney’.”

Listen to “Damage” above. Below, find the Small Talk cover art and tracklist, as well as the band’s upcoming tour dates.

Whitney’s Small Talk Album Cover Artwork

Whitney’s Small Talk Tracklist

1. “Silent Exchange”
2. “Won’t You Speak Your Mind”
3. “The Thread”
4. “Damage”
5. “Dandelions”
6. “Islands (Really Something)”
7. “In The Saddle”
8. “Evangeline” Feat. Madison Cunningham
9. “Back To The Wind”
10. “Small Talk”
11. “Darling”

Whitney’s 2025 & 2026 Tour Dates

10/16/2025 — Brisbane @ Crowbar
10/17/2025 — Melbourne @ Corner Hotel
10/18/2025 — Sydney @ SXSW, Tumbalong Park
11/02/2025 — Chicago, IL @ The Empty Bottle
11/02/2025 — Chicago, IL @ The Empty Bottle (Early Show)
02/06/2026 — Paris @ Gaite Lyrique
02/07/2026 — Lyon @ Epicerie Moderne
02/08/2026 — Milan @ Magnolia (main room)
02/10/2026 — Geneva @ Antigel Festival 2026
02/11/2026 — Munich @ Hansa 39
02/12/2026 — Berlin @ Lido
02/14/2026 — Copenhagen @ DR Studie 2
02/15/2026 — Hamburg @ Knust
02/17/2026 — Brussels @ AB Ballroom
02/18/2026 — Utrecht @ Tivoli Vredenburg (Pandora Hall)
02/19/2026 — Cologne @ Gebäude 9
02/21/2026 — Dublin 1 @ The Academy Dublin
02/22/2026 — Manchester @ Band on the Wall
02/24/2026 — Glasgow @ The Art School
02/26/2026 — Bristol @ Electric Bristol
02/27/2026 — London @ Hackney Church
02/28/2026 — London @ Hackney Church
03/07/2026 — Seattle, WA @ The Showbox
03/08/2026 — Portland, OR @ Revolution Hall
03/11/2026 — Felton, CA @ Felton Music Hall
03/12/2026 — San Francisco, CA @ The Fillmore
03/13/2026 — Los Angeles, CA @ Lodge Room
03/14/2026 — Los Angeles, CA @ Lodge Room
04/07/2026 — Kingston, NY @ Assembly
04/08/2026 — Brooklyn, NY @ Music Hall of Williamsburg
04/09/2026 — Brooklyn, NY @ Music Hall of Williamsburg
04/10/2026 — Cambridge, MA @ The Sinclair
04/11/2026 — Cambridge, MA @ The Sinclair
04/12/2026 — Portland, ME @ The State Theatre
04/14/2026 — Ardmore, PA @ Ardmore Music Hall
04/15/2026 — Washington DC @ 9:30 Club
04/16/2026 — Pittsburgh, PA @ Thunderbird Cafe
04/17/2026 — Toronto, ON @ The Concert Hall
04/18/2026 — Montreal, QC @ Théâtre Beanfield

Small Talk is out 11/7 via AWAL. Find more information here.

The Kid Laroi’s “A Cold Play” video puts the burgeoning actor’s emoting skills on display, as he strips away all the high-concept stuff to focus on his reaction to the song’s brokenhearted sentiments.

Rather than telling a contrived narrative, Laroi simply sits in front of a backdrop, willing tears into his eyes as he stares into the camera, which slowly pulls away to reveal his surroundings.

The one-take approach is straightforward and simple, but effective, capturing the emotion of the song. The video is a sharp contrast to the one for “She Don’t Need To Know,” which recounted a complicated relationship instead.

Despite releasing three songs in as many months — “She Don’t Need To Know” and “A Cold Play” were preceded by “All I Want Is You” — The Kid Laroi has yet to announce a follow-up for his 2023 debut The First Time.

Still, he’s kept relatively busy since its release, dropping singles like “Aperol Spritz” and “Slow It Down” with Quavo. He also appeared on burgeoning country star Bailey Zimmerman’s new single “Lost” earlier this year, raising his profile quite a bit. All the signs are pointing to some kind of announcement handing just over the horizon.

You can watch The Kid Laroi’s “A Cold Play” video above.

The first time I got my heart broken—really, painfully broken—I remember feeling too ashamed to ask for support. I didn’t talk about it with anyone because, at the time, there weren’t many people I trusted with such a raw and tender part of myself.

I cried a lot, so people around me knew something had happened, but looking back, I think it’s tragic that I had no friends or family I felt safe enough to open up to. No bestie to cry into a tub of ice cream with. Tragic, but also a bit revealing.

Like all painful experiences of loss, it eventually became more bearable. I resumed my regular routines. Heartbreak is just another part of life, and we move on as time passes, right?

It was over a decade later when I chanced upon a letter I had written to my ex shortly after our breakup. I found it at my parents’ house in the pocket of an old pair of pants, in a drawer full of remnants from those restless years of young adulthood when I had no true home of my own.

My stomach sank as I pulled it out, recognizing it instantly. Had someone found it and read it? Imagine that. Shame outweighed curiosity even all those years later. But the envelope was still sealed. It had his name written on the front in my handwriting.

The letter was written to him, but it was always meant for me. I had been drowning in misery when I wrote it, and re-reading the words pulled me right back into that pain. But with years of distance, I saw something I couldn’t have grasped back then.

At the time, I had believed the pain was all about losing him—that I couldn’t imagine not being with him anymore. Missing him felt like a black hole in my life, one that only he could fill. And yes, part of my pain was indeed about him. But if I’m being honest, our connection was never strong enough to justify the depth of pain I felt when it ended.

The true source of my pain—the visceral agony of the weeks that followed—was not about him at all. It was about what his rejection confirmed for me.

I’m not enough.

That is why the whole experience was so closely tied to feeling shame as much as (or more so) than feeling grief. Every insecurity I had carried since childhood—not smart enough, not interesting enough, not attractive enough, not cool enough, not sexy enough, not fun enough—felt legitimized the moment he decided I wasn’t for him. Losing him was a personal failure and a reflection of my insignificance.

Even more than that, I realized that our entire relationship had been a desperate attempt to prove my own worth. If I could be loved by him, then maybe I was good enough. That was my only focus. And in making that my focus, I sabotaged the relationship.

In the early days, I was being me. That’s what had sparked the attraction. But once we committed, I became hyper-aware of everything I thought I needed to be in order for him to keep wanting me. I stopped being present. I stopped enjoying him. Without even realizing it, I created drama—not because I wanted to, but because I needed him to prove he cared enough to stay. I was so obsessed with being enough for him that I never paused to ask myself if he was enough for me.

I didn’t know it then, but breakups don’t just hurt because of who we’ve lost. They crack open something deeper. They expose wounds we didn’t even know we were carrying.

At the time, I looked at other people—especially my ex—who seemed fine, and I convinced myself that something must be wrong with me. But looking back, I see how misguided that was. I wasn’t broken. I was reckoning with my own self-loathing. Without support. Without any reason to see how human it was.

I wish I had known that the pain of a breakup isn’t necessarily just about missing someone. It’s also about what the feeling of desertion stirs up in you. It’s about how the sudden loss of connection can make you question your own worth.

I tried to be strong by pushing through, distracting myself, pretending I was okay. I tried to hate him, fixating on all his flaws. But avoidance isn’t healing—it only postpones the inevitable. The feelings I refused to process didn’t disappear; they resurfaced in my self-doubt, in my choices, in the quiet moments when no distraction was enough.

Standing in my parents’ home that day, I was able to see the missed window of opportunity. I understood how going through that alone due to my shame never gave the experience a chance to be properly digested. The same inner critic and shame resurfaced again and again in the years that followed until eventually, I was brave enough to do the work and step into a version of myself who believes in my inherent value.

If I could go back, I would tell myself a few important things:

• This isn’t something to just get over. It’s something to move through. The pain isn’t here to break you—it’s asking for your attention.
• Real strength isn’t pretending you’re fine. It’s allowing yourself to feel what needs to be felt. It’s getting the right support, whether from a therapist, a coach, or a trusted guide. It’s letting the experience change you—not by making you harder, but by making you whole.
• Healing doesn’t mean forgetting. It doesn’t mean waking up one day and realizing you no longer care. It means learning from the loss. Understanding yourself more deeply. Stepping forward with a clearer sense of what you truly need and deserve.

I can’t go back and give my younger self this wisdom. Who knows if she would have been ready to listen anyway? But I can offer it to anyone who might be there now—wondering why it still hurts, wondering when they’ll finally be “over it.”

The truth? The most painful moments of our lives often carry the greatest invitations for self-discovery. Normalizing our pain and meeting it with self-compassion can unlock massive personal growth.

We don’t get through life unscathed. We will be hurt. We will face pain. We will have to accept the incomprehensible.

But if we learn to turn inward—to become a safe refuge for ourselves, filled with kindness and understanding—we can evolve. We can transform our lives rather than repeat the same lesson over and over, carrying that wisdom into our next experience.

So here is my wish for all of you with a broken heart. May you meet your pain so it won’t just wound you but shape you into a truer version of yourself. Stay in your heart.

About Natasha Ramlall

Natasha Ramlall is a trauma-informed mind-body health practitioner. She helps individuals see their pain in a new way which moves them into more evolved levels of mind-body health, wholeness and healing. To learn more or work with her, visit humanistcoaching.ca and get her free audio Letting Go of The Past, a 24-minute mix of visualization, mindfulness and hypnosis.
nudge your nervous system back into balance when you’re having one of ‘those’ days.

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“It’s not any of ours. Love belongs to itself. It moves how it wants to move and sometimes you catch it, and sometimes you don’t.”

Have you ever loved a friend so much they were your muse? And you loved every part of each other and you had parts that the other lacked. And you inspired each other and your love was a type of insanity and your love worked. The insanity worked. The insanity took care of the both of you and from your love you birthed a third thing. Sometimes an unspoken thing. And you hated each other as much as you loved each other for all the things you had and did not have. And you lived together many times. And he was your muse and he collected his pee in jars and you took care of him not just because you didn’t want him to die but because also he was the most interesting thing about you. Because maybe it made you a good person to take care of him. Like your friendship was the most interesting thing about you. You would go on benders in Miami doing drugs and meeting strangers and letting your love for each other take you anywhere. Take you to strangers houses and weird bars and to the beach at midnight. And your love couldn’t save each other. And your love couldn’t save either of you from time. And your love was a revolution because the way you loved each other brought about a better world between you two. And you were both better for it and also plagued by the insanity of it. Your love could not outrun time. And when your relationship fell apart you grieved in a way you had never grieved before. And then you found yourself at this play called Bad Stars and the play was about a love story all too similar to your own. And the play was about what to do in the ruins of such a type of heartbreak. A love story with no sex.

I have to tell you. I have seen Bad Stars twice now. Before it ends its run at Collapsable Hole, I will have seen it three times. I would see it five times if I could. Twice I’ve seen this play, twice I’ve left the theatre in tears, because it is doing what it is saying it is doing. It is saying a lot. Bad Stars is a play about a love story and what to do in the ruins of that love. It is a play about a love story and worms. It is a story about how to write a story. About friends breaking up and giving this story to the audience, to someone. Knowing they’ll know what to do with the ruins. I’m in ruin and I’m in awe. I got wrapped up in the slapstick and creativity of it all and then I got punched in the gut. I got devastated, because it was a story all too true.

Jess Barbagallo and Bobbi Salvör Menuez in Bad Stars, photo by Maria Baranova

I’ve never read Sam Shepard’s True West and I don’t need to. Bad Stars, an adaptation written and directed by Amanda Horowitz is everything I need to see and hear and be consumed by right now. Bad Stars is an adaptation and then some. Two brothers writing a movie about worms. But then chaos ensues. But then, things slice off and off creating new things. Wriggiling scenes and characters. Writhing spurts of language that I hold onto. I can’t shake this play. I wake up and think “It was Chester.”

Bad Stars is about the disintegration of boundaries in every form you can conceive. Time, language, plot, setting, character, performance, relationships, personhood, the end of the world, revolution. Where things stop and begin and where they don’t. What that does to us as people. What it does to love.

I walk into the set and immediately I’m brought into the world Horowitz is setting up for us. A painter sits on an elevated platform, with an easel and paints and canvas. She’s painting. Her paintings decorate the set around us. We’re in it. All of us are waiting. Her paints are desert colored, dusty hues of gray, blue, brown, and muted reds. When does the play begin? Is it when the painter makes her first stroke?

Adi Blaustein Rejto in Bad Stars, photo by Maria Baranova

Bad Stars introduces itself to us through sounds. Chicken sounds, words being yelled behind the walls surrounding us. “Boyyyysssss” in a southern drawl is repeated. Then, almost Romeo and Juliet style, the two brothers appear above our heads. Talking to each other from across the room, high up. Coyote (Bobbi Salvör Menuez) opens a curtain, Cricket (Jess Barbagallo) pokes his head out over the wall that encircles us. They talk about Chester, a third thing, love. How love is like animals, like children. Love is its own thing. I get caught in the net of language. They address us, the audience. “Stop saying you’re alone, all these people are here”. This play is about the blurring and the retelling of our relationships. About contending with time, with clocks.

There are five characters in this play. The Painter, the brothers, Cricket and Coyote, Macrame Mama and Papa. Papa. Pasta. Papa Pasta. He’s a drunk dad. He’s drunk and in the desert and he’s got two sons. One good. One bad. He says so as he stumbles on stage. The painter sits silently painting.

Bad Stars is like stage direction poetry. Another boundary played with. When does a play become a poem and when does a poem become a play? The actors speak in poems. The brothers enter the stage, moving like worms on the ground. I’m never lost in this production. Each utterance brings me to the next place I need to be. Each monologue, every line, builds the history of these brothers up around them. They are in the desert and there is an ocean in the desert.

Two characters in one. Papa Pasta and Macrame Mama are played by the same actor, Pete Simpson. Another disintegration of boundaries? The actor does an amazing job of embodying the two and adding to the playful world of Bad Stars. Crassness and earnestness and camp erupt from Simpson’s performance. There are amazing feats of the body happening throughout the production. At one point Cricket is on the floor, flagellating like a worm while lip syncing drag style “Teenage Dirtbag” by Wheatus. I can’t stop thinking in my head “this is genius.” There is insane poetry of the body, of the eye, of the spirit in this production. Done through the overlapping and breaking down of language, movement, ideas.

Pete Simpson in Bad Stars, photo by Maria Baranova

The ethos of Bad Stars is repeated again and again in different ways through the splitting and slices. It is given different points of views from all characters. It is delivered in beautiful and heartbreaking ways. The brothers lip sync to “Highwayman” by The Highwaymen and facilitate a flow of cash throughout the audience. Passing out dollars and taking them back. I’m smiling at this act of play while the lyrics of “Highwayman” reverberate around the room. The song is about time, death, and again-ness. Much so like the play. Papa Pasta delivers a monologue on getting on the wrong train getting stuck on the wrong train. Coyote delivers a monologue about loneliness, charm, and stars. What if Cricket was the only one to ever see Coyote for who he is? To give him redemption again and again. Cricket says to Coyote “I want to write a script that makes you cry, it’s so good.” Horowitz has done this. There is a rhythm to the production where I get swept up in the comedy, in the dadaism, surreal, world-making, and dissection of language. Suddenly the rug is pulled out from under me and I am face to face with an emotional truth that makes me want to drop to my knees and sob. There is an insane honesty wrapped up in the mechanizations of language and production and play.

This play is a blueprint of what to do with this type of heartbreak that is so familiar to many of us. To me at least. It felt like God. Horowoitz, producer Max Mooney, and the cast do a brilliant job of buttering you up with playful language, lovable characters, magic tricks of the stage and then devastating in the way I needed to be. It was like a mirror. It was like a tutorial video on what to do in the ruins of these relationships we have. I didn’t feel alone.

Jess Barbagallo and Bobbi Salvör Menuez in Bad Stars, photo by Maria Baranova

In the final scene, Macrame Mama comes home from her vacation on a fishing boat in Alaska and sees what the boys have done to her home while she is away. She takes everything in. She tells the painter to move, that she, Mama, wants to be the artist now.

“This canvas is like a net I throw over the ruins and see what it picks up.”

Which feels like this play. Which feels like art. Which feels like all we can do with the experiences given to us by love and life and how to share it with others. I am grateful this was in Horowitz’s net and that she gave it to us on this canvas.

This play is about two brothers cut from the same root. Estranged but now brought back together to write a movie. A movie about worms and love. A love story about friendship and the family you choose. When they were kids they would channel their energy to say and do the same thing. They would play games. Their love was a third thing that you couldn’t catch or own. Like children. Like animals. It was Chester.

Bad Stars runs through Sunday, June 8 at Collapsable Hole. 

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