Murkage Dave - RNA (Single)

Picture Credit: Najda Stäubli

Murkage Dave Returns With ‘RNA’ and Announces New Album Brut Thoughts.

Murkage Dave has announced his new album Brut Thoughts, landing 6 March via The Outlet, his freshly launched imprint in partnership with !K7 Music. To mark the news he has shared a gorgeous new single ‘RNA’, produced by Kiddus with haunting backing vocals from Young Fathers and Kiddus.

‘RNA’ is Dave at his most vulnerable, written during the months he spent caring for his father before his passing. The track wrestles with masculinity, grief and the quiet resilience required to keep going when you are stretched thin. As Dave puts it, being “a real man” is not about power or stoicism, but about owning your insecurities and finding the strength to speak them aloud.

The single sets the emotional tone for Brut Thoughts, a project that pulls together the chaos of modern life, political extremism, immigration, internet overwhelm, with Dave’s trademark honesty and wry, outsider perspective. He describes it as “millennial meme culture music”, a spill out of frustration and hope shaped by the economic fallout of the Thatcher Reagan era and the unraveling social contract that shadowed his generation.

Sonically, the album sits in Dave’s own lane: somewhere between outsider pop and gritty realism, drawing on Talking Heads, Sampha, The Smiths and The Streets. The title nods to Jean Dubuffet’s Art Brut movement, raw, unsweetened creativity, and to the classic Brut fragrance, a link back to the working class masculinity of his father and grandfather.

Created nomad style across borrowed living rooms and makeshift studios from London to Copenhagen, Brut Thoughts also carries a collaborative spirit. Contributors include James from Yard Act (under his new moniker KONOPINSKY), Kayus from Young Fathers, Ellery from WU LYF, and Lauren Auder. Touring with Yard Act in 2024 helped spark the album’s direction and led to Dave’s radio show The Outlet on Refuge Worldwide.

Across the past decade, Murkage Dave has carved out his own corner of British music, vulnerable, socially sharp, and impossible to box in. With RNA setting the tone, Brut Thoughts looks set to be his most candid and cathartic work yet.