Fresh from a landmark year expanding their universe between London and Paris, supporting Kamasi Washington on his Spring 2025 European tour, performing at COLORS – Tones of Paris in October, joining the Simple Things Festival lineup alongside keiyaA, Smerz and Florence Sinclair in July, and closing the Fusion Festival main stage after John Maus in August, 15 15 starts 2026 with ‘Queen’s Goodbye’ the second single from their debut album Mārara (which means flying fish), out Friday 6th March.
The most stripped-back track on the album, ‘Queen’s Goodbye’, is wrapped in dark, acoustic folk, threaded with ethereal harmonies and discreet atmospheric textures.
Julia’s voice, bare and deeply inhabited, fills the space entirely: fragile, almost funereal, then suddenly weightless. The melody hovers between resignation and uplift, like a step beyond the kingdom, into solitude and stillness.
In this intimate, twilight atmosphere, where melancholy brushes against a kind of grace, the song unfolds like an exhausted confession. Its repetitive, near-incantatory lines speak of weariness, disenchantment, and the void left by an over-saturated world. Yet within this dimness, an escape emerges: leaving familiar ground for “another land where the birds smile and the rain shines.” Despair turns into motion, the fall turns into flight.
Produced by Robin Morisse Mac Lean and mastered by Simon Lancelot (Dijon, Mk.gee), the record reflects the band’s strongest production and most confident creative vision to date, a conceptual work they fully stand behind and will be proud of for years to come.
The album imagines a fictional island inspired by French Polynesia: a poetic territory where traditions, ghosts of the past, and visions of the future intersect. Sung in English, French, and Tahitian, the album combines electronic textures, organic percussion, and vocal harmonies.
15 15 continues its dialogue between reality and imagination: a way of transforming uprooting into a space for creation.
Notes from 15 15:
“Under a sky set ablaze by the day’s final light, the stray dogs still bark. One of them lays a marara (a flying fish) at the feet of Queen Zoizo, a final offering to a reign on the verge of fading. Once adored, the queen has withdrawn far from the carnival and its noise, settling by a lake of slow-moving waves, where only birds keep her company.”
About 15 15:
15 15 is a French-Polynesian collective that blends music, image, and narrative. Their hybrid approach connects island cultures with urban modernity, between pop, zouk, dancehall, and electronic music.
Since their beginnings, Julia, Tsi Min, Ennio, Robin, and Marvin have explored the connections between memory and invention through unique concept projects: Ataheva (about mourning), Le Jeune (on colonization), or Saplin (celebration of casualness). Their work, both free and precise, is expressed as much on stage as in their videos or installations, often created in an artisanal manner.
Stream / download ‘Queen’s Goodbye’ here.
Pre-Order / pre-Save Mārara here.
