Puma Blue

Puma Blue announces new album 'Croak Dream' & shares single and video "Desire" out now via Play It Again Sam.

If you knew how and when you were going to die, how would it change how you decided to live? With today’s announcement of his forthcoming studio record, Croak Dream (out February 6, 2026 via Play It Again Sam), South-London born, Atlanta-based artist Puma Blue, the alias of Jacob Allen, explores the philosophical question through daring lyrical content and bold production, gesturing toward his love of trip-hop, dub techno, jungle and forward-thinking electronic music.

Alongside the announcement, Puma Blue also shares details of a February and March U.S. tour, as well as the lead single and music video “Desire”. Originally written & recorded in a hotel room, the raw, visceral sound of “Desire” went on to inspire the entirety of Croak Dream’s sonic landscape.

“I didn’t have microphones with me or anything,” shares Allen about the early creation of the track. “I ended up embracing the raw sound of my guitar recorded with my phone, no amplification. I meant to re-dub it later, but I actually fell in love with how visceral it sounded unplugged, and so I left it as it was. This approach snowballed into an appetite for these gritty and ugly sounds clashing with something more lucid and dream-like. 

Sometimes I feel like my music has been chronically shy and so with this song, it just felt time to be bold, let it all hang out, throw the paint around. A lot of recent songs have started this way, lonely and reaching for the guitar the way I did when I was a kid, a sort of old friend. Just using whatever limited tools within my reach. I taught myself guitar on an electric as a teenager and for years we didn’t have a guitar amp, so it felt kind of full circle for me. 

As for the lyrics, I’m a lover asking his partner to bed, craving what she wants. It’s just a love song really. But with jungle breaks"

The full band follow-up to 2023’s Holy Waters, which found high praise at NPR, Northern Transmissions and more, Croak Dream arrives after that record’s conscious pivot from the intimate trappings of his early EPs, as well as Puma Blue’s 2021 debut LP In Praise of Shadows.

“I discovered what Puma Blue could be if I opened it up more to collaboration,”

Allen recalls while talking about the achievement Holy Waters represented—but even though work on Croak Dream initially began after touring behind that album had ended, he put a pause on focusing on these boundary-breaking new songs to allow for a creative detour.

Searching for a different form of expression, following the full-throated environs of Holy Waters, he channeled his energy into the tunes that were collected on this year’s antichamber as well as its companion release extchamber, which represented a full immersion into acoustic textures and haunting, ethereal vocals.

“I've always wanted to be an artist that evolves,”

he explains, and leaning into the raw, un-edited, songwriting of antichamber spurred a continued creative stream of consciousness, culminating in Croak Dream, his second full-length release in a 12-month span.

“A Croak Dream is a prophetic dream where you see a vision of how you die. Half the songs on this record allude to how you might decide to live, act, if you somehow knew your awaiting fate. Being daring, romantic… Saying what you really mean.

shares Allen

The resulting record sonically spans the low-slung iridescence of trip-hop, the visceral angst of Radiohead, and Allen’s signature vocals; at one moment breathtakingly intimate, before suddenly soaring, as in the patiently building title track—constantly blooming and aching in multiple directions, like gorgeous ivy wrapping itself around ornate structures.

Croak Dream’s mesmerizing world of sound was crafted during straight-to-tape sessions at Peter Gabriel’s Real World studios with co-producer Sam Petts-Davies (The Smile, Warpaint), in a wonderfully idiosyncratic manner compared to previous Puma Blue recordings.

“‘I didn’t want to record another album like Holy Waters that just captured the sound of a band in a room’”

Allen explains—so he and Petts-Davies brought song fragments to the band to improvise over, later fashioning those improv sessions into loops that were worked into the final recordings. The process resulted in a living organism of an album that surprised even those who played on it:

“When I sent the band the finished album, it was as if they got to hear themselves playing on these songs for the first time.”

“I've put a lot of work into letting go of expectations"

Allen continues, while reflecting on how the album captures him in this current moment.

“Making this record became like a deep release of breath as I got further away from some of those limitations. My imagination swelled with all this new fire, I fell in love with it all again. It became less a question of what is this? and more like, what else? How far can I push this thing?

The result is a daring evolution for Puma Blue, combining bold experimentations with a sharp emotional clarity. It finds Allen at his most instinctive, embracing a memento mori awareness that drives feeling over precision and reveals beauty in distortion and risk.

Croak Dream will be released on February 6, 2026 via Play It Again Sam. Puma Blue will embark on a Winter U.S. tour in February 2026, with dates in New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago and more.

Tour Dates

12 February - Numbers - Houston, TX 

13 February - Granada Theater - Dallas, TX 

14 February - Paper Tiger - San Antonio, TX 

16 February - Lowbrow Palace - El Paso, TX 

17 February - Crescent Ballroom - Phoenix, AZ 

18 February - Music Box - San Diego, CA

20 February - The Belasco - Los Angeles, CA

21 February - August Hall - San Francisco, CA 

23 February - Wonder Ballroom - Portland, OR 

24 February - Crocodile - Seattle, WA

27 February - Amsterdam - St Paul, MN 

28 February - Outset - Chicago, IL

3 March - Lee's Palace - Toronto, ON

4 March - Théâtre Fairmount - Montreal, QC

6 March - Crystal Ballroom - Somerville, MA

7 March - Irving Plaza - New York, NY

10 March - Black Cat - Washington, DC 

11 March - Cat’s Cradle - Carrboro, NC

12 March - The Masquerade (Hell) - Atlanta, GA