The Cure will return this week with a new song—their first in 16 years, and the first sure sign of a studio comeback from a band that has been teasing an imminent return since at least 2019. “Alone,” the lead single of an album called Songs of a Lost World, will arrive Thursday at 7 a.m. Eastern after premiering on Mary Anne Hobbs’ BBC 6 Music radio show. Listen to a snippet on the band’s social media, and scroll down to see the cover art.

Since their last album, 2008’s 4:13 Dream, the Cure have consistently toured, attended awards shows, and spoken to the press, often alluding to new music. The false alarms began in earnest in 2014, when they said a sequel to 4:13 Dream, titled 4:14 Scream, would be released and packaged with its predecessor. After making the announcement, Robert Smith played the record down, then played it up again, and eventually decided it would never be released. In the end, the band’s promised return to the studio did materialize in 2014, albeit in the form of a cover of the Beatles’ “Hello, Goodbye” for a Paul McCartney tribute LP.

In 2019, Smith declared that the Cure had been into the studio and recorded 19 songs that were 10 to 12 minutes long, later said to comprise two albums. “We’ll finish [an album] before we start [touring] in the summer, and it’ll be mixed through the summer,” he told Rolling Stone that March. A few months later, he conceded that a few re-records were in order, but insisted he would be “extremely bitter” if a 2019 release date did not materialize.

By the following February, asked to confirm an album would come that year, he replied, “No! I’m too old to commit to idiot things like that.” Two years passed—mostly pandemic time. Smith eventually teased the Songs of a Lost World title in 2022 and introduced some new songs to setlists. Two of them, “And Nothing Is Forever” and “I Can Never Say Goodbye,” are set for release on a live single this November.

The latest album rumors had the ring of truth: In the modern tradition of major rollouts, the band sent fans mysterious postcards, updated its social media logos, and put up an album release flyer in a pub in its Crawley hometown. A mysterious website—www.songsofalost.world—launched this month, unlocked by the date November 1, 2024, in Roman numerals. Previously empty except for a sculptural head, the site now hosts the same preview of the track as the band’s socials.

Read Sam Sodomsky’s Sunday Review of the Cure’s Wish.