For more than a decade, Perfume Genius has built a following with songs that transform raw emotion into artful indie pop.
The project of singer-songwriter Mike Hadreas, Perfume Genius emerged in the late 2000s with sparse tracks that explored isolation, survival and queer experience. With a voice that can slip from a near whisper to a dramatic falsetto, Hadreas moves easily between hushed, heartbreaking ballads and brighter, rhythm-driven songs.
In the years since, that sound has broadened, layering in shimmering synths and flashes of rock while keeping the music’s confessional core.
“Glory” continues that evolution. Perfume Genius’ seventh studio album, released in March 2025, blends the emotional candor of Hadreas’ earlier work with bigger, more layered arrangements.
In February, he followed it with a digital companion, “Glory (Extended),” which adds four additional songs, including “Undercurrent (Clean Heart).”
“Most of the songs that made it on the record came together with just piano and vocal, which is a way I hadn’t written since I first started making music. There were some more exploratory songs that didn’t quite fit, but I still consider them a big part of the album’s DNA and am glad to share some of them with you,” Hadreas said in a statement about the extended version. “‘Clean Heart’ in the studio went through a lot of incarnations before we landed on the bombastic one that stuck. I still think of it as a little hymn, so it is satisfying to share this piano version.”
Perfume Genius’ tour stop in San Francisco on Thursday, March 26, is among the most anticipated pop concerts at the newly renovated Castro Theatre, which recently bid farewell to British singer Sam Smith after a 20-show residency.