26 September 2026 – Wallgrin Opens the Gates of the Underworld With Hounds of Hades

Vancouver experimental-pop artist Wallgrin, the project of Tegan Wahlgren, has released "Hounds of Hades" as the final advance single from forthcoming album Underworld Songbook, due 23 October. It will also serve as the album's opening track, which makes its mythological imagery unusually appropriate: this is effectively the creature standing at the entrance and deciding whether you may proceed.

Wallgrin's music sits in an intriguing space between art pop, folk tradition and more experimental composition, with Wahlgren using her voice as both narrator and instrumental texture. "Hounds of Hades" continues the thread established by recent singles "Dovetail" and "I.D.K.," but gives the new album a particularly forceful point of entry. The title naturally invokes the dogs guarding the Greek underworld, and the song translates that imagery into something concise and atmospheric rather than staging an eight-minute progressive-rock lecture on mythology.

Wallgrin's broader appeal lies in exactly that balance. Traditional and folkloric ideas can appear in the work without trapping it inside revivalism, while electronic and experimental elements never entirely erase the human voice at its centre. With Underworld Songbook less than a month away, "Hounds of Hades" now clarifies the record's aesthetic world: dark, theatrical and interested in old stories without treating them as museum exhibits. Plenty of albums invite you inside politely. Wallgrin has stationed mythological guard dogs at the door, which is admittedly stronger branding.