FLORENCE + THE MACHINE: HOW BIG WILL HOW BIG BE?

Republic’s Florence + the Machine are back, with a new song and video, “What Kind of Man,” hitting iTunes and Vevo today ahead of upcoming album How Big How Blue How Beautiful, due on 6/2.

The rocking track’s decidedly NSFW work video is full of sex, obsession and romantic distress. The track, meanwhile, premiered on Zane Lowe’s BBC Radio 1 show today.

The set marks the official end of Florence Welch’s hiatus, which followed five frenetic years of recording and touring around albums Lungs and Ceremonials; the flame-haired singer describes a “crash landing” into real life outside the hermetic world of the tour bus, much of which informs the new album.

The group has been managed since its inception by Mairead Nash, who was one half of the U.K. DJ duo Queens of Noize, when—as legend has it—a tipsy Welch followed her into the loo at a club and asked her to rep the project, and Hannah ‎Giannoulis.

After releasing an EP on the indie IAMSOUND in 2009, Florence + the Machine inked with Island in the U.K., then co-run by Darcus Beese and current Polydor head Ted Cockle, with Ben Mortimer (who's also now at Polydor) getting the A&R collar. Their first release on the label was Lungs (issued by Republic in the States), which was a #1, quintuple platinum release in the U.K. and platinum in the U.S.; it sold 3 million copies worldwide.

2011’s Ceremonials was platinum in both Britain (where it was #1) and the U.S. (#6). The band has earned three Grammy nominations, including a Best New Artist nod in 2011; they’ve won BRIT Awards as Critics’ Choice (2009) and British Album of the Year (Lungs, 2010) and been nominated for six others.

In the U.S., the band has sold 2.3m albums and 8.3m tracks.

How Big will How Big be? We shall see, but we're going to go with "Big."