Maruja have shared ‘Saoirse’, a powerful “song for peace” shared in solidarity with the people of Palestine.
The new track is the latest preview of the Manchester jazz-punks’ forthcoming debut album and follows previous singles ‘Break the Tension’ and ‘Look Down On Us’.
After being hailed in the NME 100 as “creating an out-of-body experience where psych sounds meet rapid-fire truths and feral moshpits” at the start of the year, the band announced their new record, ‘Pain to Power’, back in May. You can pre-order/pre-save here.
It’s set for release on September 12 via Music For Nations, with the latest offering from the forthcoming album seeing them urge listeners to “hold space in your mind for Palestine” and not look away from the “attempted erasure of a people”.
“Saoirse means freedom, something we are witnessing being violently denied to the people of Palestine,” Maruja shared in a statement about the five-minute track, which you can check out below.
“This is a song for peace, an outpouring of grief and a refusal to be numb to what we are seeing. Genocide. Man-made famine. An attempted erasure of a people. Like the olive tree, the Palestinian people have deep, resilient roots. They’ve resisted decades of forced displacement, military occupation, illegal settlements, and now enforced starvation.
“Since the 1948 Nakba, where over 700,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homes, the violence has not stopped,” they continued. “We must look to their strength and stand with them and demand more from the governments who make us complicit by spending our taxes in facilitating war crimes.”
Israel has been carrying out a full-scale military campaign on occupied Gaza for almost two years, following the October 2023 attack by Hamas at the Israeli music festival Supernova where 1,195 people were killed.
The UN has found Israel’s military actions to be consistent with genocide, and at least 56,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. As the conflict continues to escalate, Israel continues to deny allegations of genocide and war crimes against the people of Palestine, in the wake of the October 7 attacks.
“Saoirse is about resistance, and about the roots that tie us all together,” Maruja’s statement continued. “We don’t choose where we are born, but we can choose to act. It’s our decisions that define us. At our gigs, through listening to our music, you lift us up, our bodies physically moving through the crowds, our messages amplified.
“Through Saoirse we ask you to hold up more than us,” they concluded. “Hold space in your mind for Palestine. Hold up your fists. Do not look away. Saoirse don Phalaistín.”
The band are currently gearing up to play dates across the UK, Europe, China, Japan and the US later this year, and will appear at Slovakia’s Pohoda Festival tonight (July 11). Check out a full list of 2025 tour dates below, and visit here for tickets and more information.
JULY
11 – Pohoda Festival, SLOVAKIA
20 – TvSpenta festival, ITALY
26 – Deer Shed Festival, YORKSHIRE
AUGUST
7– Ypsigrock Festival, ITALY
8 – Haldern Pop Festival, GERMANY
9 – Winterthurer Musikfestwochen, SWITZERLAND
14 – Paredes de Coura festival, PORTUGAL
16 – Lowlands Festival, NETHERLANDS
17 – Pukkelpop Festival, BELGIUM
21 – Canela Party, SPAIN
23 – Shambala Festival, UK
SEPTEMBER
22 – Foundry, PHILADELPHIA
23 – Sinclair, BOSTON
25 – Elsewhere, BROOKLYN
27 – Concert Hall, TORONTO
28 – Thalia Hall, CHICAGO
OCTOBER
1 – El Rey, LOS ANGELES
2 – Constellation Room, SANTA ANA
3 – Independent, SAN FRANCISCO
4 – Harlows Startlet Room, SACRAMENTO
25 – Electric Bristol, BRISTOL
29 – The Garage, GLASGOW
31 – Whelan’s, DUBLIN
NOVEMBER
1 – The Limelight 2, BELFAST
5 – The Castle & Falcon, BIRMINGHAM
7 – The Wardrobe, LEEDS
8 – Rescue Rooms, NOTTINGHAM
12 – CHALK, BRIGHTON
13 – Electric Ballroom, LONDON
14 – O2 Ritz, MANCHESTER
19 – Botanique Orangerie, BRUSSELS
20 – LUXOR, COLOGNE
21 – Paradiso Tolhuistuin, AMSTERDAM
22 – Bahnhof Pauli, HAMBURG
26 – Hole44, BERLIN
28t – Bogen F, ZURICH
29 – Santeria Toscana 31, MILAN
DECEMBER
3 – M.OU.CO., Porto
4 – LAV, Lisbon
5 – Copernico, MADRID
6 – Sala Apolo, BARCELONA
10 – Pannonica, NANTES
11 – Le Tetris, LE HAVRE
12 – Trabendo, PARIS
After wrapping a lengthy North American tour earlier this year, bassist Matt Buonaccorsi told NME they were “some of the most energetic and frightening crowds we’ve ever had. New York was just possibly my favourite show ever.”
Alluding to the ongoing debate and campaign around freedom of expression within music that followed Kneecap’s advocacy for Palestine at Coachella, Buonaccorsi said he felt encouraged by the engagement from their fans.
“With the discourse, we’re in very politically sensitive times for both our countries – probably more so for America right now,” he told NME. “It meant that on some level, we could really relate to the fans that we were meeting. For the fans that were coming down to our shows across the States, they understood that our message is very much to be wary of authoritarianism and how that can descend into all kinds of ugly places.
“America is having a tough time right now. All the fans that were coming down were the exact type of crowd that would cheer, go crazy in moshpits. We welcomed each other with open arms. We look forward to much more of that.”
