ILA channel emotional rupture into dense, melodic alternative rock on Sorry, the latest preview of their forthcoming second album, Motherland.
Produced by Mikko Gordon, whose credits include The Smile, IDLES, Arcade Fire and Beck, the single combines biting guitars, tight drums and a heavy bass foundation with Ilayda Cicek’s controlled but unsettled vocal delivery. Its cinematic new video arrives after the Antwerp band supported The Streets across Europe.
Cicek describes the song as:
Turning heartbreak into resilience, finding strength where there was once only pain.
That shift is built into the arrangement. Rather than treating resilience as a clean emotional resolution, Sorry allows distortion, tension and melody to coexist. Its alternative-rock foundation carries traces of grunge, indie and post-punk without losing the direct hook at its centre.
The track introduces a broader creative change for ILA. While 2024 debut Ayna established the project’s emotionally charged sound, Motherland is the first album written by the complete four-piece line-up of Cicek, bassist Sam Smeets, drummer Cas Kinnaer and guitarist and keyboardist Mattias Stynen.
Smeets and Stynen developed much of the new music, giving Cicek space to concentrate on the lyrics. She travelled to Turkey with a suitcase of guitar demos and wrote around half of the album’s words there before the band expanded the material in the studio.
This album was born from the idea that we, as people, live with missing pieces. Fragments of ourselves are left behind in places, people, and dreams.
At the centre of Motherland is the experience of Cicek’s father, who moved from Turkey to Belgium during the late 1980s, leaving behind family, language, place and unrealised ambitions. The album examines how those absences continue to shape identity across generations.
Its visual language also draws from Elif Shafak’s novel There Are Rivers in the Sky and its exploration of water as a connection between people. Natural imagery consequently runs through the record’s wider presentation, including artwork created by Zack Kinnaer with creative director Moenia Ladhib.
ILA first broke through in 2022 after winning Studio Brussel’s De Nieuwe Lichting with Leave Me Dry, which subsequently spent three weeks at number one in De Afrekening. Following the mini-album Felt, the band released Ayna through PIAS in 2024.
Their live profile has since grown through appearances at Pukkelpop, Rock Werchter, Lowlands and Eurosonic, alongside support dates with The Streets, DIIV and Parquet Courts.
Motherland will be released on 9 October 2026. ILA’s autumn European tour includes four UK dates in Brighton, Manchester, Leeds and Bournemouth during November.
By redistributing the writing roles and building from the instincts of a full band, ILA have made Sorry feel less like a standalone comeback and more like a structural reset. Its weight comes not only from louder guitars, but from a clearer understanding of what the band can express collectively.
ILA – UK TOUR
4 November — The Brunswick, Brighton
5 November — The Peer Hat, Manchester
7 November — The Pack Horse, Leeds
8 November — Bear’s Bar & Venue, Bournemouth
ILA – FULL EUROPEAN TOUR
2 October — De Post, Hamont-Achel
22 October — Bar Dada, Lommel
24 October — Gigant, Apeldoorn
25 October — De Living, Heist-op-den-Berg
29 October — De Singer, Rijkevorsel
30 October — Gildhof, Tielt
4 November — The Brunswick, Brighton
5 November — The Peer Hat, Manchester
7 November — The Pack Horse, Leeds
8 November — Bear’s Bar & Venue, Bournemouth
16 November — Schokoladen, Berlin
17 November — Nochtwache, Hamburg
19 November — Rust, Copenhagen
21 November — Supersonic, Paris
27 November — Neushoorn, Leeuwarden
28 November — Ancienne Belgique, Brussels
3 December — Luxor, Arnhem
4 December — Patronaat, Haarlem
6 December — Volt, Sittard
11 December — Mezz, Breda