Danny L Harle has released his new single ‘Raft In The Sea’, featuring acclaimed songwriter and vocalist Julia Michaels. The track is the latest to be unveiled from Harle’s highly-anticipated debut album Cerulean, due for release on 13th February 2026 via XL Recordings.
An emotionally exposed centrepiece of Cerulean, ‘Raft In The Sea’ finds Harle stripping back his trademark maximalism to reveal a song of quiet devastation and fragile, euphoric beauty. Built on swelling synths, slow-burning harmonies and a sense of open space, the track foregrounds Michaels’ vocal in its most raw and melancholy form – drifting between intimacy and enormity, solitude and surrender.
WATCH/LISTEN
Danny L Harle – ‘Raft In The Sea (feat. Julia Michaels)’
Speaking about the collaboration, Harle says:
“I was incredibly honoured to work with Julia – she does not need to do anything for anyone. I initially met her during a Dua Lipa session, and my jaw literally dropped when I heard her sing this idea in the room. I heard something in her voice that I’d not heard in her own music. In a similar way to working with MNEK, I wanted to bring out the rawness and melancholy of her voice. When we were making this song, I asked her, ‘Can you just be sad?’ And she said, ‘For you Danny, I will.’” Her performance is just incredible.”
The song exemplifies Harle’s desire on Cerulean to seek out emotional truth and unfamiliar colours in voices we think we know – a theme that runs throughout the album’s 13 tracks. Cerulean marks Harle’s first full-length release on XL Recordings and his most definitive artistic statement to date. Following 2021’s immersive Harlecore project, Harle considers Cerulean his true debut. “This is my debut album,” he says. “It really is the big one.”
A voyage into vast, alien sonic landscapes, Cerulean fuses speaker-blowing bass and euphoric trance synths with classical harmonies, tactile sound design and Harle’s own field recordings of waves lapping against the shore. Inspired by Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker, the record exists “on the threshold between dreams and reality,” capturing what Harle describes as a pursuit of melancholic euphoria – megalophobic in scale yet deeply human at its core.
Seeking “the best melodies sung by the best voices,” Harle enlisted an exceptional cast of collaborators including Caroline Polachek, Clairo, PinkPantheress, Oklou, MNEK, Julia Michaels, and newer voices such as kacha, alongside contributions from his own daughters. These performances sit within a musical world shaped by influences ranging from hedonistic rave culture and the Dark Souls video game series to Philip Glass’s Einstein on the Beach and Renaissance and Elizabethan composers including Monteverdi, Thomas Tallis and William Byrd.
Born in North London, Harle’s early exposure to both avant-garde composition and chart pop forged his singular musical language. Emerging from the PC Music collective with 2013’s ‘Broken Flowers,’ he has since become one of pop’s most adventurous producers, working with artists including Charli XCX, Carly Rae Jepsen, FKA twigs, Florence and The Machine, Shygirl and Dua Lipa, while co-executive producing Caroline Polachek’s Pang and earning a GRAMMY nomination for his work on Desire, I Want to Turn Into You.
‘Raft In The Sea’ follows previous Cerulean singles ‘Starlight (feat. PinkPantheress),’ ‘Azimuth (feat. Caroline Polachek),’ and ‘Crystallise My Tears (feat. Oklou & MNEK)’, in addition to the longer-form Starlight Divergence and Azimuth Divergence projects which saw Torus and Rachika Nayar respectively reimagining Harle’s densely-arranged source material into something entirely new.
DANNY L HARLE
CERULEAN
13TH FEBRUARY 2026
XL RECORDINGS
Tracklisting
- Noctilucence
- Starlight (feat. PinkPantheress)
- Azimuth (feat. Caroline Polachek)
- Facing Away (feat. Clairo)
- Raft In The Sea (feat. Julia Michaels)
- Island (da da da)
- Te Re Re (feat. kacha)
- Laa
- O Now Am I Truly Lost
- Two Hearts
- Crystallise My Tears (feat. Oklou and MNEK)
- On & On (feat. Caroline Polachek)
- Teardrop in the Ocean
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