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BMGThe Pretenders recently announced plans to release a new studio album, Hate for Sale, on May 1, but now the band has revealed that the record’s arrival has been pushed back to July 17, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

However, the Rock & Roll Hall of Famers have just released the album’s title track as a digital single and via streaming services.

The song got its premiere Tuesday on the U.K. radio station BBC 6 Music, and you can check it out now on YouTube. Explaining the inspiration behind the tune, Pretenders frontwoman Chrissie Hynde says, “We all love punk, so I think it would be fair to say that ‘Hate for Sale’ is our tribute to the punk band I considered the most musical of the genre — The Damned.”

As previously reported, Hate for Sale features 10 new original songs co-written by Hynde and Pretenders guitarist James Walbourne, marking the first time the two have penned a full collection of tunes together.

“I wanted to write with him since day one,” Chrissie maintains. “James is especially sought after and has recorded with Jerry Lee Lewis, [Depeche Mode frontman] Dave Gahan, and The Rails, to name but a few. We always planned on writing while on the road, but as anyone in a band will tell you, being on tour is a procrastinator’s dream come true.”

In conjunction with announcing their new album last week, The Pretenders released the first advance track from the record, “The Buzz,” a melodic mid-tempo pop-rock tune that equates love affairs with drug addiction.

The Pretenders currently are scheduled to team up with Journey for a lengthy North American tour that kicks off May 15 in Ridgefield, Washington, but the trek could be affected by the coronavirus pandemic.

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