Dry Cleaning’s ‘Secret Love’ is 2026’s first truly great album of this still-young year, a brave and nimble third album that distills these times of catastrophic chaos with gravity, rough beauty, and unflinching insight. All 11 songs masterfully lash together the personal and the political into a taut bow of confessional anguish and resistance. Dry Cleaning’s wit is still discernible, but so is the hurt of witnessing a world riven by war, deception, and rhetorical aggression. Florence Shaw on vocals, Tom Dowse on guitar, Lewis Maynard on bass, Nick Buxton on drums, and touring keyboardist Josh Eggerton arrived at WFUV to play a trio of songs from the band’s third album: lead single “Hit My Head All Day,” recent single “Joy,” and “Evil Evil Idiot.” They also chatted about working with producer Cate Le Bon and a shared goal of changing the ways they’ve played or vocalized in the past, their Wilco studio connection, and the tsunami of current events that drove the evolution of ‘Secret Love’ and what Dry Cleaning wanted and needed to express. Shaw explains: “A small alarm goes off when something needs to be said.” Major global events have always trailed Dry Cleaning, and on March 6, 2020, the quartet, who’d just signed to 4AD on the back of their two EPs, 2018’s ‘Sweet Princess’ and 2019’s ‘Boundary Road Snacks and Drinks,’ was the last band to play in FUV’s Studio A before the pandemic lockdown.