FOLK SINGER-SONGWRITER SHAINA HAYES UNVEILS PLAYFUL, COUNTRY-TINGED TITLE-TRACK “KINDERGARTEN HEART” ALBUM OUT THIS FRIDAY
Last week, folk singer-songwriter Shaina Hayes unveiled Kindergarten Heart, her sophomore effort and debut Bonsound release. She presented the album’s title track, an uplifting and playful song with a distinctive country feel. Over the next few weeks, Shaina Hayes will be flying to Austin, Texas, to perform at SXSW, before taking her show on tour.
With the previous singles “Sun and Time” and “New Favorite”, Shaina Hayes garnered attention from Consequence, KCRW (NPR), The Line of Best Fit, and Under the Radar, as well as an enthusiastic review in UK magazine Uncut for her new album.
Pre-order Kindergarten Heart on vinyl, CD or digital.
On “Kindergarten Heart”, Shaina Hayes gets back in touch with the childlike, carefree parts of herself that she sometimes forgets exist. With delicate restraint, the song begins with sparkling fingerstyle guitar over an ambient pedal steel. With her angelic voice, Hayes describes the patient act of peeling back the inhibitions of adulthood in order to recover the magic and ‘’kindergarten heart’’ at one’s core. With its playfulness, “Kindergarten Heart” lays the table for the journey down memory lane into which the singer-songwriter takes us throughout her new album.
Kindergarten Heart is Shaina Hayes’ follow-up to coax a waltz, released independently in 2022. On both albums, the singer-songwriter worked with Francis Ledoux and David Marchand (from the band zouz) who co-produced the record. Together, the three worked to gently weave elements of nostalgia, wonder, and lightheartedness into this collection of songs. The result is a sophomore album that is both whimsical and earnest, and whose soothing charm is also reflected in the record’s artwork, thanks to Lawrence Fafard’s pictures. In its final form, the album is about the act of looking back, either through an active lens to inform the current moment or through a more passive lens, as a means of honoring one’s memories and the people they contain.