venbee announces new EP ‘Back to the Drawing Board,’ out Sept. 4, with hazy lead single ‘Stars (John’s Local)’
venbee has always written like someone talking herself through the worst of it, which is exactly why her new EP feels like such a deliberate turn. On July 31, the Kent artist announced Back to the Drawing Board, arriving September 4, and shared its lead single “Stars (John’s Local),” a hazy, stream-of-consciousness track that trades her usual confessional weight for pure imagination. It is a small pivot on paper. In practice, it sounds like an artist deciding she is allowed to have fun again.
The single sets the tone. Built around a single absurd, joyful premise, “Stars (John’s Local)” imagines a mate’s ordinary pub quietly morphing into the biggest rave on earth. “This song is my imagination coming to life,” venbee says. “The idea was a mate’s local pub turning out to be the world’s biggest rave, and I got to paint the whole made-up night as it unfolded.” The accompanying video, directed by Dante Richardson, follows that fantasy in real time, and the whole thing plays like a daydream she refused to talk herself out of.
A Deliberate Creative Reset
The EP’s title is not subtle, and it is not meant to be. Back to the Drawing Board marks a conscious reset, with venbee stepping away from the deeply personal songwriting that defined her early work in favour of stories drawn from everyday moments, other people’s nights out, small observations, invented scenes. For an artist whose breakthrough was rooted in raw autobiography, choosing to write outward rather than inward is its own kind of risk. It is also a sign of confidence, the move of someone who trusts her voice enough to point it at something other than her own diary.
That context matters because of where venbee started. She broke through in 2022 with “Low Down,” a dark pop-meets-drum-and-bass single about depression that became a genuine viral phenomenon, topping 21 Spotify Viral charts including number one in the UK and earning a Radio 1 Introducing Track of the Week nod. She followed it with the cheeky, blasphemous “Messy in Heaven,” proving early that she could swing from devastating to playful without losing herself. Back to the Drawing Board reads like the full flowering of that second instinct.
Building Toward September
The EP will not arrive cold. Back to the Drawing Board collects previously released singles “encore, encore” and “not my day” alongside “Stars (John’s Local),” meaning fans have already been living inside pieces of this era before the full picture snaps into focus on September 4. That drip-feed approach lets each track breathe on its own while quietly assembling the mood of the whole, a scattered, warm, slightly surreal snapshot of ordinary British life turned up a few degrees.
There is something quietly radical about an artist known for heaviness choosing lightness on purpose. venbee is not abandoning depth so much as widening the lens, letting the mundane become magical and the local pub become a portal. In a UK scene that often rewards artists for staying in whatever box first made them famous, her willingness to reset is the most interesting thing about her right now.
Back to the Drawing Board lands September 4. On the evidence of “Stars (John’s Local),” it may be the sound of venbee finally writing for the joy of it, and inviting everyone else into the rave she dreamed up in her head.
