Puma Blue New Album ‘Croak Dream’ & Tour

If you knew how and when you were going to die, how would it change how you decided to live? With the arrival of “Croak Dream”, the title track from his forthcoming record (out February 6 via Play It Again Sam), Puma Blue introduces the philosophical question at the centre of his latest studio record.

“A Croak Dream is a prophetic dream where you see a vision of how you die. Half the songs on this record allude to how you might decide to live, act, if you somehow knew your awaiting fate. Being daring, romantic… saying what you really mean.” Allen explains.

At the centre of this world sits the title track itself. Guided by the whirring of the genre polymath’s mind, Jacob Allen sings over a backdrop of hypnotic, avant-instrumentation with gestures toward his love of trip-hop, dub and the harder edges of electronic music.

Explaining the song’s lyrical intent, Jacob shares; “‘Croak Dream’ is about someone I have dreamt of for years. Nightmares really, I just have not been able to shake them yet. I thought maybe what I needed was a sort of exorcism, so I wrote this song unpacking this strange bond that has haunted me, and then put it to bed, or death, at the end. It is a laying of a ghost to rest, I hope.”

Recorded straight to tape at Peter Gabriel’s Real World studios, Croak Dream sees Jacob Allen expand the project’s sonic world with co-producer and mixer Sam Petts-Davies (Thom Yorke, Warpaint). Longtime collaborator Harvey Grant contributed to the textural identity of the record. “Later at Real World Studios, the band and I recorded tape loops over a small fragment of the demo, none of them heard the finished song, and when Sam and I came back to London we cut those improvisations into this Frankenstein’s monster type collage. We were really leaning into a mutual love for CAN, Aphex Twin and Queens of the Stone Age.”

“I am not romanced by short forms at the moment, finding myself longing for longer songs, like Lana Del Rey’s “Venice Bitch” or Jeff Buckley’s “Lover You Should’ve Come Over”, so I wanted to let this one breathe and build like a movie sequence.”

The single arrives with a video that extends the track and album’s dream logic, rendered into a visual multiverse. Inspired by early PlayStation game design, it pulls the viewer into a retro world that resembles the angular surrealism of titles like Silent Hill, Metal Gear Solid and Tomb Raider. The video mirrors the track’s sense of being held in suspension by our fate, the game-scape both nostalgic and eerily unfamiliar – Puma Blue’s live band members each traversing their subconscious through surreal dream-like adventures.

Jacob expands, “I wanted the video to evoke boyhood and be in conversation with the lyrics. The basic idea was to create a PlayStation style game paying homage to RHCP’s Californication video, but in a way that carried deep meaning for the band. I searched high and low for the right person who could capture the nostalgia of games like Silent Hill, Tomb Raider and Pro Skater until I found Quill (@grabmypepsi). I wrote him a script, and he animated it all from scratch. Then it got run through VHS right at the end so that it felt truly like it would if you were playing it in the late 90’s. It felt like a way to honor these friends and, in a strange way, the children we were back then.”

Croak Dream signals the beginning of this new era for Puma Blue, channeling the project’s sultry, emotional and conceptual complexity, with an instinct-led take on experimenting with his art to find its most evocative form. Puma Blue tours extensively in 2026 in support of the record – dates listed below.

Tour Dates
February 12 – Numbers – Houston, TX
February 13 – Granada Theater – Dallas, TX
February 14 – Paper Tiger – San Antonio, TX
February 16 – Lowbrow Palace – El Paso, TX
February 17 – Crescent Ballroom – Phoenix, AZ
February 18 – Music Box – San Diego, CA
February 20 – The Belasco – Los Angeles, CA
February 21 – August Hall – San Francisco, CA
February 23 – Wonder Ballroom – Portland, OR
February 24 – Crocodile – Seattle, WA
February 27 – Amsterdam – St Paul, MN
February 28 – Outset – Chicago, IL
March 3 – Lee’s Palace – Toronto, ON
March 4 – Théâtre Fairmount – Montreal, QC
March 6 – Crystal Ballroom – Somerville, MA
March 7 – Irving Plaza – New York, NY
March 10 – Black Cat – Washington, DC
March 11 – Cat’s Cradle – Carrboro, NC
March 12 – The Masquerade (Hell) – Atlanta, GA

Album artwork & track list:

1. Desire
2. Mister Lost
3. Hold You
4. Croak Dream
5. Heaven Above, Hell Below
6. (Fool)
7. Hush
8. Jaded
9. Silently
10. Cocoons
11. Yearn Again