Sparks Release ‘Porcupine’ Video Starring Self Esteem

Sparks, Ron and Russell Mael, have released the official video for their new single ‘Porcupine’ starring Self Esteem.

‘Porcupine’ is taken from the band’s first EP – MADDER! – released Friday 3rd October 2025.

Having announced their first EP ‘MADDER’ and the release of lead single ‘Porcupine’, Sparks have shared its accompanying video, starring musician and songwriter Self Esteem. Directed by Fred Rowson, produced by Blink Productions, with special effects by Selected Works, the release of the video follows Ron and Russell’s surprise appearance with Gorillaz at the Copper Box Arena in London and coincides with the North American leg of their band’s MAD! Tour.

After conquering the world with their 28^th studio album MAD!, the eternally-creative Ron and Russell Mael are releasing the first EP of their illustrious career.

Four-track EP MADDER! is a companion to the Mael brothers’ record-breaking MAD! album, which gave them their career-best UK chart position. MADDER! follows on the tail of their rapturously received tours of Europe and Japan earlier this year, and alongside a string of North American dates.

“Not wanting the Mad!ness to end and buoyed by the phenomenal reaction to MAD!, we made a hasty but intense retreat to the studio to record a Sparks first: an EP,” say the band. “MADDER!, a four-song companion piece to the album, is for everyone who isn’t yet MAD! enough.  We hope these new songs will take you to an even MADDER! place.” 

The worldwide release of MADDER! is October 3, although physical copies – on CD, black vinyl and picture disc – will be on sale to fans during Sparks’ North American tour in September. The first single from the MADDER! EP is ‘Porcupine’, out now, a song of a guy’s fascination with a woman who possesses, shall we say, a prickly personality, all to a verse with a highly infectious organ riff that yields to heavy guitars in the choruses. “She’s a porcupine,” Russell croons—a metaphor or something more troubling?

The other tracks on the EP are ‘Fantasize’, ‘Mess Up’ and ‘They’, and the new material is in the pioneering spirit of the MAD! album, which was greeted with rave reviews, including five-star ratings from Record Collector (“…further proof of genius”) and the Daily Telegraph (“The gold standard for left field pop”).

Sparks’ recent European tour, with the usual eclectic selection of the Mael brothers’ work, set against a stunning production, has also been an unqualified success, with Louder Than War describing the show as “a hundred minutes of energetic, thrilling pop songs spanning half a century” and Classic Rock Magazine writing “Wit, pathos and brutality….a hugely thrilling injection of joy and power”.

MADDER! Tracklisting

Porcupine

Fantasize

Mess Up

Feature Image Photo Credit: Munachi Osegbu

Sparks’ first EP – MADDER! – released Friday 3rd October 2025 via Transgressive Records.

Pre-save MADDER!: https://transgressive.lnk.to/madder

Stream/buy ‘Porcupine’: https://transgressive.lnk.to/porcupine

Official Website: https://allsparks.com/