Karen Dió is back to conquer the world that little bit more with her new EP, the follow-up to 2024’s ‘My World’.

Titled ‘Fugaz’, it is set for release on August 21 via Hopeless Records.

The artwork looks like this:

Whilst the tracklisting is more like this:

1. Euphoria
2. Free Yourself
3. Choke
4. Crawling
5. Rat Race
6. Fugaz

You can also check out the first taste of it now in the form of ‘Free Yourself’, a blink-and-miss-it piece of pop-punk brilliance that slams you with bright and breezy positivity and wholehearted joy. It showcases not just Karen’s love for a spiky chorus but also for her music carrying a message that can be lived by. It’s a step up to the plate in a big way and will be lodged in your head almost instantly.

She had this to say about the tune, explaining, “Funnily enough, Free Yourself is a song that I dreamed of. Most of the time I unfortunately forget the songs by the time I’m awake, but I’m glad I remembered this one. Later the same day, I decided to work on it and the melody of the chorus immediately came. When I showed the embryo of it to Matt (Bigland of Dinosaur Pile, Karen’s husband and writing-partner), he immediately was like, ‘That’s a hit!’ so we started to write the rest.

During the whole process of writing Free Yourself we would remind ourselves to be completely free with our creativity and, to be honest, to try being ridiculous sometimes. One of my favourite parts of the song came from an improvisation where I said “Jeans are dangerous,” and Matt thought it was great, but he thought I said “Genes are dangerous.” We loved both quotes, but we decided to go with “Genes are dangerous” because it felt more provocative.”

Karen is set to hit up plenty of festivals in the coming months. Here is where you will be able to see her:

JUNE

27 – ABTSWIND Abgeht die Lutzi Festival

JULY

02 – WERCHTER Rock Werchter Festival
08 – CHELTENHAM 2000trees Festival
10 – MADRID Mad Cool Festival
25 – PLOVDIV Hills of Rock Festival

AUGUST

01 – GRÄNICHEN Open Air Gränichen
06 – GEISELWIND Hütte Rockt Festival
07 – HAMBURG Amplifire Vol. 1 Festival
08 – ESCHWEGE Open Flair Festival
09 – ROTHAUSEN Taubertal Festival
14 – BUDAPEST Sziget Festival
27–29 – TORREMOLINOS Canela Party Festival

SEPTEMBER

04 – COPENHAGEN Omega Festival
07 – GLASGOW King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut
08 – MANCHESTER The Deaf Institute
09 – LONDON 100 Club
12 – BRIGHTON Green Door Store