Walk the Moon, the alt-rockers behind the hit song “Shut Up and Dance,” have announced that they’re going on indefinite hiatus.
On Friday (July 14), the Walk the Moon frontman Nicholas Petricca broke the news to fans in an emotional 11-minute video.
“The time has come for us to take a good long break from touring and making records together,” the keyboardist/singer said in the opening of the clip, which was posted on the Cincinnati-based band’s official YouTube channel. “When we do reconvene, that will be a glorious day. The truth is, we don’t know when that’s going to be.”
Petricca noted that he and Walk the Moon bandmates, guitarist Eli Maiman and drummer Sean Waugaman, are “filled with love, gratitude, appreciation and some heartache” as the group goes into hibernation.
“It is an enormous act of love to carefully lift something like this from the center of our lives and place it gently to the side, out of focus, and let it rest for a moment,” Petricca said. “It’s a choice we made powerfully to follow our truth, to make space for new creations, for family, to serve our well-being and, in the long run, even serve the well-being of Walk the Moon, like hibernation, to hopefully come back one day stronger than before.”
In the video, Petricca revealed that Walk the Moon’s final concert (scheduled for Aug. 12) will be livestreamed and that the band plans to release new music. The frontman also teased that he’s working on a “solo project universe” and that Maiman has “a new musical collaboration” on the way.
Walk the Moon’s self-titled debut peaked at No. 36 on the Billboard 200 albums chart in 2012. Two years later, the rock act dropped their breakout hit “Shut Up and Dance,” which peaked at No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. The group’s most recent album, Heights, arrived in 2021.
Watch Walk the Moon’s hiatus announcement below.
