Wolf Alice competes for Mercury Prize once more with ‘The Clearing’

Stop us if you’ve heard this one before, but Wolf Alice is nominated for the Mercury Prize.

The “Moaning Lisa Smile” outfit will compete for the 2025 edition of the esteemed award with their latest album, The Clearing. Each of the band’s previous three albums also made the Mercury Prize short list, and they won in 2018 with Visions of a Life.

“Those things are out of your control,” bassist Theo Ellis tells ABC Audio of Wolf Alice’s Mercury Prize noms. “It’s lovely to have a record you worked hard on put next to people who also obviously worked really hard and made amazing art themselves.”

The Mercury Prize recognizes the best British or Irish album of the year and is considered one of the most prestigious honors in music.

“I think people take it really seriously that are on the voting panels, and people really have a reverence for music,” Ellis says. “So it’s a really nice thing to be recognized.”

Beyond the possibility of Wolf Alice being nominated, Ellis always looks forward to the unveiling of the Mercury Prize long list, which he feels “champion[s] a really diverse selection of music.”

“There’s always something I haven’t heard of when they present it to the world,” Ellis says. “It kind of just broadens people’s horizons.”

“It’s so easy to get trapped algorithmically these days,” he laughs. “[The Mercury Prize] still manages to retain its relevance globally as a British cultural thing. Something to be really proud of.” 

Wolf Alice will also be performing at the 2025 Mercury Prize ceremony, taking place Thursday in Newcastle, England. Other nominees include Sam Fender‘s People Watching and Fontaines D.C.‘s Romance.

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