Australian rising star Ali Barter heading for Leeds

Two years on from her blistering debut A Suitable Girl, rising star Ali has announced her triumphant return with 'Hello, I’m Doing My Best' - a revealing collection of songs that track her most formative relationships: to her body, her instincts, sobriety and the old vices it counteracts, and the people she loves most.

The album is set for release on October 18, via PIAS. while Ali has also revealed her first ever love song with, ‘Backseat’, which Triple J premiered and her first-ever global tour, which includes a date at Leeds venue the Lending Room on Sunday, September 29.

Directed by Anna Phillips, the video for ‘Backseat’ has also premiered and sees Ali weave through a comedy of errors with long time collaborator and husband Oscar Dawson (Holy Holy). Ali describes the treatment as being about "two awkward people that get together one night at a bar. A girl admires a boy from afar but when she meets him they are so clumsy and over eager that they end up injuring each other during a late night jam session. It's just like love really. A mess.”

Watch the video for ‘Backseat’ here'Hello, I’m Doing My Best' follows Barter’s 2017 debut LP 'A Suitable Girl', a record that, by all accounts, was critically and popularly acclaimed.

Ali Barter, however, was not so sure. “The first record came out and for some reason I rejected it,” she says, listing the complaints she found with her own work. "It’s too polished and my voice is too high" being at the top of the list. Overcome with self-doubt, Barter pushed herself away from music, determined to never write another song.

But in the winter, a few months after the record's release, she went out of town to clear her head, with her guitar for company.

"Stuff started coming up and I couldn't push it down," she says, and despite feeling like she "wasn't ready" for what these songs were saying, her and Dawson went about recording and testing the limits of her surprising new songs. She heard something in them she'd realised she didn't need to fight anymore. "When we demoed them up, I was like, Oh, there I am. The thing I was pushing against was me."

Since winning the triple j Unearthed competition and releasing her debut album A Suitable Girl in 2017, the former choir girl has enjoyed support at home from triple j, FBi Radio, The Australian, Rolling Stone and Tone Deaf, while further afield, Beats 1, Clash and The 405 have all thrown support behind the unconventional pop star.

Barter has toured relentlessly, completing two sold out headline tours, countless festival slots and supported The Rubens, The War On Drugs, The Jezabels, Stevie Nicks, The Preatures, Chrissie Hynde and personal hero, Liz Phair.