[Cover photo credit to Byron Spencer]

Australia’s The Jungle Giants have returned with “Hold My Hand.” A taste of the group’s upcoming fifth album, it follows 2021’s Love Signs. The track is bolstered by a live orchestra and layers of strings.

In 2024, frontman Sam Hales experienced the end of a decade-long relationship and a jet-ski accident that required surgery and two months of recovery. Searching for “something that felt real in a period of numbness,” the song “Hold My Hand” was the first time he was able to address his experiences.

He shares:

These are all beautiful, beautiful, positive memories that changed me for the better. It was just really hard to figure out a way to write about it and figure out a way to define how I felt. This song really helped open up a lot of the writing for the album. All the songs I wrote before weren’t feeling real enough. Once I landed on ‘Hold My Hand’, a lot of things fell into place for me. I had this real emotional reaction to it.

Hales adds:

Things have changed, but there’s beauty to all this. I would not do anything differently. This is really important to me as an artist, really important to me as a friend, and a lover and everything. ‘Hold My Hand’ really captures the feeling of 10 years with someone, and watching the love just evolve.