Australian singer-songwriter Jacqui Hunt returns with Desiderium, a deeply personal new album released through her independent label QUSP on 26 June 2026.
Available digitally, on CD and as a limited-edition vinyl release, Desiderium marks Hunt’s first full-length album in 18 years and arrives four decades after the formation of the influential Australian electronic group Single Gun Theory.
Built around themes of grief, memory, love and renewal, the album finds Hunt reflecting on the emotional weight of losing both of her parents within a two-year period. Its title comes from the Latin word for a profound longing for something that has been lost and cannot be replaced.
Rather than remaining entirely inside that sense of absence, however, Desiderium gradually moves towards healing, continuity and a renewed awareness of life’s inherited connections.
Between electronic atmosphere and organic songwriting
Created alongside Hunt’s husband and long-time musical collaborator Brian Conolly, the album combines abstract synthesizer textures with piano, strings, organic percussion and carefully restrained pop structures.
The result is cinematic without becoming distant: an atmospheric record in which Hunt’s voice remains the central emotional presence.
Its musical world recalls the expressive art-pop of Kate Bush and Tori Amos, alongside the darker intimacy associated with Beth Gibbons, while maintaining Hunt’s own distinctive connection between electronic sound and poetic songwriting.
The album’s focus track, “Cape of Light,” captures this balance particularly well, carrying a feeling of openness and illumination within the record’s wider meditation on loss and transformation.
Elsewhere, “Planet” unfolds as a spacious electronic love song. It began with a poem sent by Conolly while he was travelling overseas, which Hunt spontaneously transformed into music across the distance between them.
At the opposite end of the album’s emotional spectrum, “Cycles” strips the arrangement back to a melancholic piano-led form. Its accompanying video was directed and edited by Kade Stenders, continuing a creative connection that reaches back to the visual history of Single Gun Theory.
A voice with a lasting electronic legacy
Hunt is best known as the vocalist and co-writer of Single Gun Theory, whose combination of sampling, electronic experimentation and emotionally charged songwriting established the band as an important presence in Australian alternative music.
She later reached a wider international audience through her collaboration with Delerium, contributing vocals and songwriting to “Euphoria (Firefly)” from the group’s landmark 1997 album Karma.
Her wider catalogue also includes collaborations with Paul Mac, Vision Four 5 and David McClymont, as well as her 2008 solo debut Auraphonic.
The continuing relevance of Single Gun Theory was underlined in 2026 when the group’s music appeared during Chloé’s Winter 2026 runway presentation in Paris.
With Desiderium, however, Hunt is not simply revisiting her history. The album presents a mature and focused body of work that connects the electronic language of her past with the emotional clarity of the present.
It is a record about what remains after loss—and about finding a way to return to the world with greater honesty.
Desiderium tracklist
Desiderium
Look At The Sky
Planet
Cecilia
Cape Of Light
This Love
Temple Of Illumination
Follow Me Here
Cycles
Mother
Alice Magic
Desiderium is out now through QUSP on digital platforms, CD and limited-edition vinyl.
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