THE WEEKND BEGINS

The Weeknd's forthcoming album, Starboy (XO/Republic), became available for preorder Wednesday, with an expected street date of 11/25 (aka Black Friday). The title track and lead single, featuring Daft Punk, is the first insta-grat track—which quickly flew into the Top 3 at iTunes. All other song titles are hidden except for a currently inaccessible cut titled "False Alarm."

The Daft Punk-assisted track, which arrives just in time for Grammy consideration, was produced by the robots in conjunction with Doc McKinney, Cirkut and The Weeknd. It hits radio today with an iHeart premiere across multiple formats; it can be streamed on Apple Music, Spotify and other DSPs.

The artist unveiled the cover and title of his forthcoming album release via Instagram Wednesday prior to the preorder. The Starboy cover drop followed several days of tantalizing hints on his various social-media feeds.

Likely to provoke nearly as much chatter as news of the follow-up to his smash Beauty Behind the Madness album is The Weeknd's much shorter and more streamlined hairstyle, as provocatively photographed for the cover by Nabil Elderkin.

Like Radiohead wiping clean their Internet footprint just prior to the release of A Moon Shaped Pool earlier this year, the superstar has been minimizing his social-media accounts to tease this announcement.

After replacing his Twitter profile pic with a black box and posting an intense-looking portrait on Facebook, the enigmatic Canadian artist has deleted all of his Instagram posts while playfully referencing himself as ⚡️✝⚡️ STARBOY ⚡️✝⚡️. 🍂⌛️

— The Weeknd (@theweeknd) September 15, 2016

Stay tuned for more Weeknd updates.