Shaina Hayes unveils the single New Favorite and announces the release of her sophomore album

After announcing her signing to Bonsound last month, folk-pop singer-songwriter Shaina Hayes now releases New Favorite, the first single from Kindergarten Heart, her sophomore album due for release on February 23rd, 2024. The album launch show will take place at Le Ministère in Montreal on April 4th, and other concerts are planned across Quebec in the spring.

In New Favorite, Shaina Hayes looks back at the sparkle of new love and attempts to coax this feeling into the present. Driven by a simple, persistent guitar melody, the song’s verses accumulate momentum as the rhythm section swells, giving way to a lush vocal-heavy chorus that makes you feel as though you’ve slipped through the looking glass.

Shaina Hayes uses Kindergarten Heart to explore the concept of purposeful remembering; honoring memories by pulling them forward, often to let them inform the present. As the album’s first single, New Favorite serves as a playful introduction to this greater theme.

Kindergarten Heart is her follow-up to to coax a waltz, released independently in 2022, and her first release with Bonsound. 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 which is both whimsical and earnest, and whose soothing charm is also reflected in the design of the record.

After the gray monotony of the pandemic, Hayes realized that it was going to take a focused effort for her to be able to tap back into joy and play. During this period, the initial theme of Kindergarten Heart began to take shape: the rekindling of childlike wonder. During the making of the album though, the theme evolved to encompass all memory, not simply of childhood. 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 these memories and the people they contain.