Steve Lacy has released “The Feeling,” pairing the 2026 single with a Matthew Castellanos-directed music video that turns a new song into a full visual reset. The clip opens on Lacy’s floating head in pitch darkness, then moves through an empty room, a sparkler-lit performance and shirtless shots against psychedelic backdrops.

The release pushes forward the rollout for Oh Yeah?, his third album, which is due out next month. For listeners who have been waiting since October 2025, when Lacy began teasing the project with “Nice Shoes,” the new song is the clearest sign yet that the next phase is finally moving.

He has framed the album as something more deliberate than a standard return. In an interview with Rolling Stone’s Jeff Ihaza, Lacy said the project has taken “a lot of time and thought” and described it as “fully designing a new language” for himself. That language appears to be built with care: the new video leans into surreal imagery rather than a straightforward performance clip, as if the visuals are meant to match the sense of reinvention he is describing.

But the spacing matters. It has been almost four years since Gemini Rights, the project that brought him his biggest hit so far in “Bad Habit” and earned him a Grammy Award for Best Progressive R&B Album in 2023. That gap gives the new single weight, even as Lacy talks about the rollout like the start of a freshly engineered era rather than a simple comeback.

Oh Yeah? is still the main event, and next month’s release will be the moment this new design gets tested in full. For now, “The Feeling” is doing the job singles are meant to do: it shows Lacy back in motion, and it makes clear that he wants this chapter to sound and look unlike the last one.