Grayscale Roar Back Bigger and Bolder with 'The Hart (Deluxe)'

Grayscale aren’t just ending their year with a victory lap, they’re slamming the door on 2025 with enough force to rattle the whole alt-rock scene. 'The Hart (Deluxe)', the expanded edition of their acclaimed fourth album, lands with a brand-new centrepiece: “Painting Over You (with Cassadee Pope)”, a soaring, heart-splitting duet that proves just how far this Philly crew are willing to push themselves.

The original album dropped back in January and immediately set the tone for Grayscale’s biggest year yet, but the Deluxe edition, released 3 December via Infield, hits with the force of a band who know they’re in their prime. Millions of streams, coverage everywhere from Forbes to Rock Sound, and a festival résumé boasting Slam Dunk, Riot Fest, Firefly, Sad Summer, and So What?! Fest, Grayscale have levelled up from scene favourites to alt-rock heavyweights. With a packed UK/Europe headline tour closing out 2025, they’re moving like a band who’ve found their stride and are refusing to let up.

Formed in 2016 and rooted in Philadelphia grit, Grayscale are built on stories, family histories, decades of music passed down, and a shared hunger to turn emotion into something explosive. Frontman Collin Walsh channels '90s rock nostalgia through a lens of raw vulnerability; drummer Nick Veno plays with the instinct of someone who was practically born behind a kit; guitarists Dallas Molster and Andrew Kyne draw on family legacies and jazz roots to give the band their sweeping, melodic punch. It’s this blend of backgrounds that lets Grayscale hit so hard while staying painfully, beautifully human. Their support for organisations like Girls Rock Philly and the AFSP only deepens the sense that this band means what they say, onstage and off.

The Hart (Deluxe) takes everything fans loved about the original and detonates it. Each track is twisted into a new form, remixed, reimagined, or cracked open to let someone else’s voice bleed through. Collaborations with Smallpools, Derek Sanders, Slowly Slowly, and more add new colours to the band’s already expansive palette. The album opens with widescreen ambient drama before shifting into electronica-soaked adrenaline (“Let Go”), shimmering soft-rock melancholy, and the kind of anthemic catharsis that owes as much to The Killers and Cage The Elephant as it does to Bruce Springsteen.

But it’s “Painting Over You” that steals the spotlight. With Cassadee Pope’s aching, crystalline vocals weaving around Walsh’s gritty delivery, the song erupts into a storm of emotion, a bittersweet collision of regret, longing, and release. The accompanying video pares everything back to two singers in a lived-in apartment, performing with a closeness that feels almost intrusive. It’s the kind of contrast that Grayscale thrive on: massive emotion delivered with disarming sincerity.

Grayscale have always been a band built on heart, bruised, messy, unfiltered. 'The Hart (Deluxe)' proves that heart has teeth. And in a year full of highs, growth, and relentless touring, this release isn’t just a bonus round. It’s a statement: Grayscale aren’t just part of the modern alt-rock landscape, they’re shaping it.

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