British alternative band Daytime TV have announced their forthcoming second studio album Rodeo, to be released on 19th February 2027. Alongside the announcement, they have today released new single Meditate.
Daytime TV
Frontman Will Irvine explains that the album represents a whole lot more than the fun of having a photo shoot with a massive horse (though admits “who turns that down?”). “We wanted something that kind of pointed at the sort of turbulent times that we’d been through personally, but almost in like a sort of slightly tongue-in-cheek way. I think, to me, what it means is just kind of getting back on the horse after going through some really difficult things. Also musically, some of the music is quite wild and free and sort of feels quite primal and organic. We kept coming back to this imagery of like a powerful animal, and like a horse was kind of the thing. So Rodeo ticked all those boxes.”
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The release of the poppier, synth-heavy Meditate seems to reveal a variety of styles when compared to their other recent, more abrasive singles that will appear alongside it on Rodeo. Will says that there was never any fear about the inconsistency of how their music progressed from song to song. It only made the process more exciting, and only proved more that they are not one-trick ponies. His pun, not ours…
“I think what we are is a group of writers and musicians that just want to express ourselves, and however that comes out, we like it and we keep it. So we’re not trying to be a rock band, we’re not trying to be a pop band. We’re not trying to be alt-synth. It’s like if we’re in a studio with some time and some cool equipment and ideas, what comes out is what comes out.”
What has come out today is new single Meditate, written during the strenuous 2026 heatwave. The band agreed that now was a better time than ever to “write something a bit more chill”.
“We were just messing around with ideas, and we all just got chatting about themes, and we wanted it to be different from the other stuff we’d been doing. Which was a lot about, like, you know, becoming reborn as a person and, like, moving forward after a trauma. We wanted this to be just something a bit more light and a bit more relatable. We all realised we had common ground with that first relationship, thinking, ‘Oh, I wonder what they’re doing now’. I think everyone’s got that, where you kind of sometimes find yourself just imagining what life would have been like if you had made it work.”
However, even then, the band’s desire to step away from traumatic subjects was haunted by great anguish. The negative medical metaphors used in its lyrics, which represent what really became of its lonely protagonist once he snaps back to reality from wistful fantasy, were uncomfortably true to life for Will.
The very presence of this brief moment of calm represents quite a shock. Will recently had a life-threatening experience when he suffered a horrifying bout of Still’s disease, a rare autoimmune condition which took doctors over six months to identify. One doctor even called Will their “mystery patient”.
“I’d never heard of this thing, and no one was suggesting that as a possibility. It was horrible. But, coming through that… the record kind of comes in a point where we’d sussed out how to start slowly making it better. I was going from a situation where I thought maybe, you know, I was gonna lose everything, to finding myself in a situation where slowly, day by day, I was kind of being handed back everything. I was becoming myself again and, like, stepping back into who I was. It kind of intercepts at that point where I’m starting to feel powerful again.”
Daytime TV @ Marshall Party
“A Positive Slant on a Not Very Positive Situation” Putting “Rebirth” to Tape
This led to a conscious effort by Daytime TV to put the experience into song and create “music that can help other people step into the version of themselves that they’ve always wanted to be, or how they picture themselves to be, and to maybe shed some anxieties or some fears.” The influence of Will’s experience can be found throughout Rodeo, in individual tracks and across its chaotic structure. “I knew we had to write quickly, to get these feelings down to kind of mark that change. When you have a proper life intervention like that, it suddenly gave me all this ammunition. Things I wanted to say, and things I wanted to put across.”
Creatures, a heavy and distorted 90s rave-inspired party tune, is both playful and a focused, agitated reflection on mortality. Will repeats the mantra “this is where I wanna be found when I’m dead”. And apparently, there is more of this to come. “There are unreleased tracks from the record that kind of meet that feeling of kind of self-empowerment, even more head-on than probably Creatures. I’m very grateful to have been able to get better, and to be able to put these feelings across.”
In retaliation (or as cheerily as retaliation can be), there is Sun. Lyrically, it seems to be very much about escape and what Will describes as “a positive slant on a not very positive situation”. Everybody is invited along, as Will sings, “Island in the sun / I can feel it in my lungs / I’m the only one / Tell you what I’m running from”. The ambient swell of buzzing instruments glows around him, and it feels as though it is going to explode with positive energy. Even the power-on that the song warbles into action during its opening seconds is a reminder that something has changed for the better and brighter.
Daytime TV @ Marshall Party
Its music video features a sparkling orange monster dancing against the idyllic backdrop of mountains and thriving forest. Will reveals who is in the hilarious, if impractical, costume. “So Gareth, our drummer, and Naomi, bass player, they were the only ones that fit inside the suit. They kind of, like, tag-teamed it. If you know them well enough, you can see who’s in it at every moment.”
The universal optimism of Sun was put into full practice as the summer anthem blared out of more speakers than Daytime TV had ever expected. “When the football World Cup was on, we kept getting all these messages being, like, ‘That song with, like, the Orange Monster, it keeps playing on the World Cup footage!’ And it was! It was on the England and Scotland games, just before kick-off. They were playing Sun all the time, which was really cool. I mean, Scotland, we didn’t exactly get very far in competition, but, hey, we were still there!”
Daytime TV
Rodeo is an album centred on unpredictable contradictions. One would have thought that it would be a very daunting task for any producer to have to deal with such a bumpy ride of ambitious material, loaded with such sentimentality, and bring it to life. However, Daytime TV never had any disbelief in the skills of producer Pete Hutchings, who had previously worked on records with Royal Blood, Foals, and Gang of Youths. They worked with him for two months on Rodeo in Marshall Records’ studio.
Will explained what made these sessions with Hutchings so fulfilling. “I think Pete’s an amazing example of a producer that kind of helps artists to step into being brave and bold because he won’t say no to an idea. I’ve had my fair share of times being shot down by producers for coming up with ideas that maybe sound a bit left field. But Pete will never. He’ll let an idea go all the way down the tunnel. And then if you get to the end and realise, okay, it’s actually not that great, then we pivot. But he lets every idea have its moment and flourish, so he was incredible.”
Daytime TV Breathes New Life Onto the Road With Music Venue Trust
Daytime TV’s desire for adventure extends beyond their new record and onto the stage, as they are ready to embark on a thorough UK tour that stops by small venues in towns that Will hasn’t yet set foot in, such as Coventry, Newport and Hull (“Fasten your seat belts, people of Hull!” – Will). The tour is a collaboration with Music Venue Trust, a charity that acts to protect, secure and improve grassroots music venues.
Daytime TV @ The Old Blue Last
It is no wonder that Daytime TV is very much on board with the cause. Will reminisces on just how outlandish concert venues would need to be for him to consider it “the middle of nowhere”, having had to travel great lengths for his first concerts from his childhood home village of Achiltibuie in the far north Scottish Highlands (he decides that he would need to be somewhere in the Arctic Circle).
“Obviously, in our village there’s ceilidhs and traditional music, and I love that. But if you want to go and see something a bit more kind of mainstream, you’re gonna have to travel a long way. The closest city is Inverness, which is a couple of hours’ drive. The venue that we all used to go to shut down four or five years ago. There used to be a festival in Ullapool, which is about forty-five minutes away from my little village, but that’s also closed down. So if I was, you know, thirteen years old now living there, there would literally be nothing.”
However, it sounds as though Daytime TV has difficulty slowing down, no matter what stands in their way. “We just want to bring the music to the people. I think we’ve always had the ethos since we started of just saying yes to shows. Now that we’ve got slightly bigger production, you know, if it works costs-wise, we are always up for it.”
In fact, this entire conversation seems to have come as a relief to Will, as he couldn’t wait to divulge more about what is to come. “As soon as we finished making it, I just wanted to give it to everyone and tell everyone to get amongst it. But yes, it feels very nice to now be able to open up a bit more about it and share it with the world.” Saddle up, everybody. Daytime TV’s chaotic rodeo may be showing up in your town sooner than you think.
Daytime TV
Interview with Will Irvine of Daytime TV by Nick Pollard, October 2026.
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