[Cover photo credit to David Doobinin]

Juliana Hatfield has released the single “Scratchers” along with a video directed by Paige Applin. It’s the first release from her 21st solo album, Lightning Might Strike, available December 12th, 2025, via American Laundromat Records. It will arrive on CD, cassette, and LP in 4 vinyl color options. Signed copies, limited-edition bundles, and test pressings are also available.

The song can be seen “as a testament to endurance” and a hint at the album itself, which was recorded mostly in Hatfield’s house, by her, and was two years in the making. 

The album, Lightning Might Strike, captures a period of major change for Hatfield.

It was a difficult time for me when I started working on this album. I had just uprooted myself from the city apartment building where I’d been living for twenty years to a house in a more rural town two hours away where I knew no one, when one of my best friends died (‘Ashes’), and then my dog died (‘Constant Companion’), then my mother was diagnosed with esophagus cancer (‘Scratchers’). I was pretty depressed for a solid year (‘Long Slow Nervous Breakdown’) and was lost and very lonely (‘Harmonizing With Myself’). I was thinking about fate and circumstance and about how I’d ended up where I was (‘Where Are You Now’).

Joining Juliana Hatfield (guitar, keyboards, vocals, percussion, bass) on this album’s journey were Chris Anzalone (drums), Ed Valauskas (bass) and Pat DiCenso (mix/mastering).