Personal Trainer announce their forthcoming album, Still Willing

Commenting on the track frontman Willem Smit says: “Round was one of the last songs to make it onto the album. I had most of the record mapped out, but I felt it needed something that in The Netherlands I would call “een lekker nummertje”, which I guess means something in-between ‘a banger’ or ‘a tasty little ditty’. Or something. I tend to want one of those on records I make.”

Video director Kilian Kayser adds: “The idea of making a video with an orange playing the role of Willem seemed fun. So we organized a last-minute show with an orange on lead vocals at the Helikopter in Amsterdam and spent a day wandering through the city to shoot the video. A major inspiration was the video for ‘Tom Courtenay’ by Yo La Tengo. I thought it would be a fun idea to end the clip with a live show. It's my favourite typical music video trope. A sort of feel-good happy ending with a band making everything right for the protagonist on an uncomfortably small stage.”

The forthcoming second album follows their 2022 debut, Big Love Blanket, and as Willem says, is a record fuelled by its extremes: sometimes energetic and loud, sometimes quiet and thoughtful, always full of hidden pleasures. “When I listen to the records I make, the main thing I hope is that every time something happens on them, you’re like, ‘Wow.’ I like to be taken by surprise like that on a record, to kind of be thrown around.”