High As Hope, Florence + the Machine's hugely-anticipated fourth studio album, is the sound of an artist who appears more certain than ever of herself. "It's always a work in progress, and I definitely don't have everything figured out," bandleader Florence Welch notes. "But this feels like quite a pure expression of who I am now, as an artist, and an honest one. I'm just more comfortable with who I am." Florence writes about her teens and twenties with a renewed, more mature perspective: of growing up in South London, of family, relationships and art itself. "There's a lot of love in this record, loneliness too, but a lot of love," she adds.

Florence wrote, co-produced (her first time co-producing a Florence + the Machine album) and recorded the majority of High As Hope in solitude, cycling to her studio in Peckham every day. She finished the songs in Los Angeles with her friend and co-producer Emile Haynie, bringing in Kamasi Washington, Sampha, Tobias Jesso Jr, Kelsey Lu and Jamie xx as further collaborators. Florence mixed the record in New York, where the daily view of the skyline – often in stark contrast to the chaos of the wider world – gave the album its title.

Discussing lead single "Sky Full Of Song," Florence says, "This was a song that just fell out of the sky fully formed. Sometimes when you are performing you get so high, it's hard to know how to come down. There is this feeling of being cracked open, rushing endlessly outwards and upwards, and wanting somebody to hold you still, bring you back to yourself. It's an incredible, celestial, but somehow lonely feeling."

Follow-up "Hunger" pairs Florence's intimate, rawly honest lyricism with a broader sense of acceptance, community and joy. "Hunger" is effectively about acknowledging those holes in our psyche that we try to fill with love and hate, obsessions or addictions but you can ultimately only ever satisfy yourself. "This song is about the ways we look for love in things that are perhaps not love, and how attempts to feel less alone can sometimes isolate us more," says Florence. "I guess I made myself more vulnerable in this song to encourage connection, because perhaps a lot more of us feel this way than we are able to admit. Sometimes when you can't say it, you can sing it."