Chicago punk act Sincere Engineer announce ‘Probable Claws’ for June 26 and share new single ‘Twist My Tongue’ via Hopeless Records
Sincere Engineer have announced their fourth studio album, ‘Probable Claws‘, due June 26 via Hopeless Records, and dropped its opening track, ‘Twist My Tongue‘, alongside an accompanying video. The announcement marks the Chicago band’s first new album cycle since 2023’s ‘Cheap Grills’ and arrives at a moment when frontwoman Deanna Belos is operating with sharper focus and wider reach than at any previous point in her band’s decade-long existence.
The eleven-track record was cut entirely at Electrical Audio, the legendary Chicago studio built by the late Steve Albini and long associated with uncompromising, unfiltered independent recording. For a band whose sound has always prized directness over polish, the choice of room is fitting. “We set out to make a very straightforward pop punk record,” Belos has said, while noting that the album still carries several of the more quietly devastating ballads Sincere Engineer fans have come to expect alongside the anthemic material.
Punk Built Around the Weight of Passing Time
The album’s thematic spine is anxiety, specifically the creeping, inescapable discomfort of time moving faster than you are ready for. “I think the overall theme of this record is being uncomfortable with the passing of time and how quick time passes,” Belos explains. “Not all the songs touch on that, there’s some songs about me moving too fast through life myself.” That tension, between urgency and paralysis, between forward motion and looking back, runs across a tracklist that spans the Bad Religion-indebted punch of ‘LOL’ to ‘Arborvitae Evergreen’, a song Belos wrote about the backyard of the house she grew up in. “It’s kind of the song I’ve been telling people I wrote for myself,” she has said of the latter. “It takes me back to that place.” Lead single ‘Cooler‘ gave the first signal of the album’s emotional register back in March. ‘Twist My Tongue’, which opens the record, pushes further into the cathartic, hook-forward pop-punk Sincere Engineer have refined through years of relentless touring, including support runs alongside Say Anything, Motion City Soundtrack, and a string of international dates. The new single arrives with a video directed to match the song’s urgency, and confirms ‘Probable Claws’ as something the band’s growing global audience has been building toward.
From Support Slots to a Headlining Moment
The album cycle carries added significance for the band personally. Sincere Engineer have spent years paying their dues as an opening act for some of punk’s most established names. ‘Probable Claws’ comes with their first major headlining tour. “I can’t believe we’re on our fourth record and about to do a big headlining tour of our own to celebrate,” Belos says. “We had such a blast recording Probable Claws and it was a privilege to record it at Electrical Audio, which is an absolute dream of a studio, right here in Chicago.” In May 2025, Belos released a self-made documentary, ‘Nobody’s Gonna Do It For You: Ten Years of Sincere Engineer’, to mark the band’s first decade. The film previewed a band that had earned everything methodically and without shortcuts. ‘Probable Claws’, arriving in June 2026, is the record that puts the weight of that decade to work.
‘Probable Claws’ tracklist: ‘Twist My Tongue’, ‘Cooler’, ‘Pilot Light’, ‘DNA’, ‘LOL’, ‘Fast Forward, Rewind’, ‘Hallucinogenic’, ‘Arborvitae Evergreen’, ‘The Perfect Crime’, ‘Settle Up with Your Downfall’, ‘Dynamite’.
