20 years after the release of their sublime album Pretty In Black, Sharin Foo and Sune Rose Wagner are returning to the road for a celebration of the 2005 classic. The project marked the point where the Danish duo dialed back the guitar whiplash of 2002’s Whip It On mini-album and the full-length follow-up Chain Gang of Love, in favor of letting their classic song-writing chops take the lead.
It worked like a charm, yielding 13 shimmering vintage-pop beauties such as “Here Comes Mary,” “Twilight,” and the eternal band staple “Love in a Trashcan.” It was a new direction that, upon the album’s release in May 2005, attracted Rave reviews from NME, Alternative Press, Uncut, and inspired David Fricke of Rolling Stone to describe it as “history on the march.”
“That period in the band’s life was wonderful,” remembers Wagner. “We got to collaborate with so many legendary people like Mo Tucker from the Velvet Underground, Martin Rev from Suicide and the great Ronnie Spector on ‘Ode to LA’. We still love that album and the fans still ask us to play songs from it all the time. So the 2025 fall tour is the perfect time to do it!”
The mid-00s were a time when Sharin and Sune were inescapable, and at the forefront of music culture. The first ideas for the Pretty In Black album began to take shape when the band were on a US tour with the Strokes, just as the post-punk revival of the era was taking flight, and afterparties still took place away from smartphones. “I don’t know if we can call it the era of indie-sleaze because we were both on major label’s at that point,” says Foo. “But we could get pretty sleazy when we wanted to! I still have some risqué polaroids of us partying with Julian Casablancas and Albert Hammond Jr, somewhere! I see so much discussion and fascination with those years. The books and documentaries. I can understand why. It was a fun era to be a part of.”
Pretty In Black didn’t just have critical fans, it attracted praise from none other than Dave Gahan and Martin Gore of Depeche Mode, who personally invited the band to tour with them later in the year and into 2006. “I used to watch Depeche Mode in stadiums growing up,” says Wagner. “So to actually be sharing a stage with them was truly vindicating for The Raveonettes. They treated us so well, and they couldn’t say enough nice things about Pretty In Black. Martin even joined us on stage for an unforgettable rendition of the album’s opener The Heavens. We’re still friends with Martin and Dave, to this day.”
Pretty In Black isn’t the only part of the The Raveonettes catalog that is coming back into view. Their 2010 cover of The Stone Roses’ swaggering anthem “I Wanna Be Adored” went viral on social media during 2024 (around the time of their last US tour). It became a popular sound for video creators on TikTok and has quickly become one of their most streamed songs on DSPs. “We couldn’t plan for that obviously, but that dreamy, shoe-gazing sound has become a thing again,” says Foo. “We’ve always had those influences and it really came out in the Stone Roses cover we did. During a day off on our last tour, I was sitting in a coffee shop next to a college age girl on her phone. She was watching TikTok videos and one of them had that cover as the audio. I’ve heard Raveonettes songs on the radio before, but that was a new experience!”
But Sharin and Sune aren’t letting their greatest hits do all the talking in 2025. There’s also the small matter of the April 25th release of Pe’ahi II: a roaring sequel to their surf-inspired 2014 album Pe’ahi. “It follows the same themes of fragility of life, death, longing and, not least, vulnerability,” says Wagner.
While serving as an ode to Pretty In Black, the fall 2025 tour will also serve as a teaser to a completely new, twelfth studio album which the duo are planning to work on throughout the year. “I’m proud of our history and I’m happy to see so much interest in what we did with our musical peers in those days,” remembers Wagner. “But I can’t live in the past, either. I wanna make sure that in 20 years, someone is celebrating the anniversary of what we’re doing now!”
