The Weeknd announces new album 'Dawn FM' is coming this week

Posted Monday morning (Jan. 3), the one-minute teaser video promises "a new sonic universe from the mind of the The Weeknd" and boasts a heavy-hitting list of collaborators: Jim Carrey, Quincy Jones, Tyler, the Creator, Lil Wayne, and Oneohtrix Point Never.

"You are now listening to 103.5 Dawn FM," an ominous voice narrates. "You have been in the dark for way too long. It's time to walk into the light and accept your fate with open arms."

Dawn FM arrives Friday (Jan. 7).

The Weeknd (born Abel Tesfaye) hinted yesterday that the announcement was imminent with this tweet saying, "wake up at dawn tomorrow..." The day before, he was a little more explicit that a new project was on the way:

Carrey heightened the already sky high anticipation by tweeting that Dawn FM is "deep and elegant and it danced me around the room":

In an April 2020 interview for Variety, The Weekend shared that Carrey's The Mask "was the first film I ever went to see in a theater."

“I texted him the address of my condo in L.A., and he said, ‘I can literally see your place from my balcony,’ and we got out telescopes and were waving to each other," the chart-topper explained to the publication. "And when I told him about my mom taking me to see The Mask, he knew the theater! Anyway, on my [30th] birthday, he called and told me to look out my window, and on his balcony he had these giant red balloons, and he picked me up and we went to breakfast. It was surreal. Jim Carrey was my first inspiration to be any kind of performer, and I went to breakfast with him on my first day of being 30.”

All indications are that Dawn FM will similarly be a full-circle experience for fans—picking up where After Hours, his record-breaking 2020 album, left off. "If the last record is the after hours of the night, then the dawn is coming," he told Variety in a separate interview last spring.

And no pressure or anything, but After Hours only housed "the new No. 1 song on Billboard's Greatest Songs of All Time Hot 100 Chart" in "Blinding Lights," which held the No. 1 spot on the Hot 100 for four weeks, kept within the top five for 43 weeks, the top 10 for 57 weeks and on the chart overall for 90 weeks.

"Save Your Tears" also peaked at No. 1 on the Hot 100, and After Hours became his fourth No. 1 album. For context, The Weeknd has only released four proper studio albums. That excludes his 2011 beloved trilogy of mixtapes House of Balloons, Thursday and Echoes of Silence, as well as other smaller projects along the way.

The reigning Super Bowl halftime performer will additionally make his mark in 2022 with his forthcoming hour-long HBO drama The Idol. Read more on that here.