Warpaint Returns: First Gig in Two Years Opens Harry Styles’ Meltdown at Southbank Centre

Warpaint made their return to the stage last night (Thursday June 11), performing their first show in nearly two years as part of the Harry Styles -curated Meltdown festival at London’s Southbank Centre. Check out photos, footage, the setlist and more of what went down below.

It was announced back in April that Styles would be following in the footsteps of David Bowie , The Cure’s Robert Smith , Nick Cave ,  Patti Smith ,  Grace Jones ,  Christine And the Queens ,  Nile Rodgers ,  David Byrne ,  Yoko Ono ,  Little Simz,   Jarvis Cocker and many more in handpicking artists to perform across 11 nights at the legendary venue in the capital.

His takeover running until Sunday June 21 will see a bill including Stephen Fretwell , Nilüfer Yanya , Orlando Weeks , Bar Italia , Dev Hynes , Jon Hopkins , Getdown Services,   LCD Soundsystem ‘s James Murphy, and  Soulwax take to the various stages at the centre, as well as Styles himself.

Paying tribute to Warpaint as “a band I love so much,” Styles took to social media to look ahead to the opening night and “so many wonderful shows”. After support from Hot Chip ‘s Alexis Taylor and to an audience that included Johnny Marr , the LA indie veterans took to the stage to open with the hypnotic ‘Burgundy’ from their 2010 debut album ‘ The Fool before a crowd-pleasing set that leaned heavily on debut EP ‘Exquisite Corpse’

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The band were in high spirits at their first gig since November 2024, keeping stage banter to a minimum aside from encouraging the seated crowd to get on their foot and thanking Styles and Meltdown for having them. A set of mesmeric psych punctuated by groove, highlights came with fan favourites ‘Love Is To Die’, ‘Champion’, ‘Undertow’, ‘Billie Holiday’, ‘New Song’ and ‘Disco//Very’ as well as a short cover of Kate Bush classic ‘Running Up That Hill’ and an extended jam accompanying the beefy ‘Elephants’.

No new material was aired, as fans await word on the follow-up to 2022’s acclaimed ‘Radiate Like This ‘.

Warpaint’s appearance on the Meltdown line-up comes after they supported Styles on a South-east Asia in 2018. “It was so much fun,” singer and guitarist Theresa ‘TT’ Wayman told NME . “It was great. It was such a luxurious tour, because we were in Asia where they just treat you like kings and queens. He was just really nice and such a great guy. He has this saying ‘treat people with kindness’ all over his merch. He really means it, too. Plus he’s bouncing all over the place stylistically with his openers, and I think that’s really cool for someone in his position. I don’t see a lot of big pop artists expanding outwards like he does.

“He does have a lot of girls in the audience, and it was good to play for younger girls while being a band who writes music for themselves. We’re not just singers. I think we could be a really good example for them.”

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Warpaint’s Meltdown 2026 setlist was:

‘Burgundy’

‘Love Is To Die’

‘Hips’

‘Champion’

‘Composure’

‘Undertow’

‘Running Up That Hill’ (Kate Bush cover – snippet)

‘Billie Holiday’

‘Bees’

‘Elephants’

‘New Song’

‘Disco//Very’

‘Krimson’

Encore:

‘Common Blue’

‘Beetles’

Meltdown continues tonight with a performance from Stephen Fretwell and runs until June 21 with a closing show from Soulwax. Visit  here for tickets and more information.

Tonight also sees Styles play the first night of his Wembley Stadium residency .

Earlier this year, Styles confirmed a huge, seven-city ‘Together, Together’ tour , which includes a 12-night residency at Wembley  and an impressive 30 dates at Madison Square Garden in New York City. When tickets went live for UK dates,  there were queues of up to 250,000 people for each of the shows.  It was also revealed that Styles broke several records at both Wembley and Madison Square Garden thanks to huge demand .

The Wembley gigs will see the ‘As It Was’ singer  donate £1 from every ticket sold to LIVE’s levy , helping to protect UK grassroots music venues and support emerging talent. You can  visit here  for any remaining UK tickets, and  here  to get international tickets.

His recent album ‘ Kiss All The Time. Disco, Occasionally ’, scored four stars in NME , which described it as “an album that you’ll really want to spend a lot of time with, letting all its layers envelope you”. It added: “It’s the most exploratory album of his career so far, trying out new things and steering his ship in new directions.”

The post Warpaint kick off Harry Styles’ Meltdown with first gig in nearly two years at Southbank Centre appeared first on NME .

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