Hope Tala is emerging from her very own cultural reset of sorts. The West Londoner made a name for herself as a uni student, folding her inspiration and experience into an intimate musical language that feels equal parts romance and philosophy. Self-taught on the guitar at age 14, raised on the tones of Lauryn Hill, Erykah Badu and D’Angelo, the words of Maya Angelou, Zadie Smith, Sylvia Plath and Toni Morrison, her poetic lyricism and singularly hypnotic vocals have gained her enamoured fans in everyone from Dazed and Billboard to Barack Obama through to the HBO team behind the new gen Gossip Girls remake.

Now based between LA and London, the 26-year-old artist has made her return to the scene with the brooding single ‘I Can’t Even Cry’, her first release since 2022 and as a newly independent artist . “The reason for new music taking so long was logistical and business-related I guess, but I will say it’s given me the opportunity to make a lot of music that I wouldn’t have been able to make otherwise.” After beginning the writing process back in 2021, the last few years have been full of transformation, self discovery and life lessons for Hope and this next stage sees her gearing towards her debut album later in the year.

Reflecting now on the project she began with, Hope laughs that she couldn’t believe the feedback that she received that it was about “60% there”. Cut to present day and just two songs from that original twelve have made the cut. The rest are the unfurling snapshots of the metamorphic years that followed. “I’ve really had the opportunity to grow as an artist and a human being and have certain experiences that I wouldn’t have been able to catalogue [back then],” she admits. And the result, Hope Handwritten, is a deeply grounded yet sprawling coming of age album that also feels like something of a homecoming. On it, she weaves together threads of mental health struggles and heartbreak with new love and friendships, questions of ancestry and humanity with self-revelations and introspection.

String-filled album opener ‘Growing Pains’ is the perfect theme tune of this next phase: ‘trying to grow a thicker skin, trying to get out this predicament I’m in, like I don’t even know where I should begin, at the start or in the middle, the poem or the riddle.’ Sonically, it washes over you with the soothing Hope Tala signature of her ‘Lovestained’ days. Only this time the gentle, swooning story told is one of a more candid, reflective reality than intoxicating dreamscapes. “It definitely encapsulates everything and funnily enough, it was the first song I wrote from the album so it kind of manifested shit hitting the fan,” she laughs.

Upcoming single ‘Bad Love God’ is a playful anthem that vibrates with the energy of the band in the room, so close in fact that you can hear a hand glide across the neck of the guitar as the track kicks off. Hope sings of sins, confessions and repentance but also acceptance, faith and freedom, painting a giddying portrait of love as religion and the divine pain and beauty of bad decisions.

Oozing, melodic track ‘Jumping the Gun’ is the flip side to that recklessness. Instead of two opposing forces, it captures a tangled knot of emotions as Hope reflects sweetly over a bossa nova-infused production, ‘jumping the gun for you, but I’ve got way too much to lose, I let myself get confused.’ “It’s really live and organic sounding, but with a synth to it too. [Generally] I wanted to focus on live instrumentation and a sound that felt timeless,” she says.

When it comes to her creative process, location has also played a huge role, beyond just expanding her creative collaborations: “London is home and there’s so much baggage that comes with that… It’s tied to education and family and home and all these messy, messy, complicated but amazing things in my past. Whereas I come to LA and I write and it’s kind of this landscape that I can project onto because my history with it isn’t as deep. Doesn’t hurt that it’s also sunny and beautiful and it’s sort of a romantic place in that sense.” In this reintroduction, that’s taking place internally and externally for Hope, the possibilities for her feel as panoramic as the Los Angeles palm tree landscapes. And yet at the same time, her sound is still as warm, glowing and whimsical at the centre as it’s ever been. “The most powerful thing that I feel when I listen to music that I love is that it’s somewhere I want to be, I want to live in it,” she says, wanting her music to be its own little utopia too: one of perpetual summer, no police, no prisons and free education, she jokes. “But I would love people to listen to [my music] and see themselves or something they recognise in it and also to want to come back to it and live in it in that way too.”

The whimsical, wildly talented Korean-Canadian artist Luna Li’s sophomore album, When a Thought Grows Wings, is a snapshot of its creator in flux. For the 27-year-old, born Hannah Bussiere Kim, the journey was tumultuous, pivotal, and necessary: she split with her partner of eight years, left her hometown of Toronto for LA, and found her world opening up in new ways.

“It was really me discovering who I was as an adult for the first time,” she says. “I was really stepping into my own and taking my life into my own hands.”

Li — who first started playing piano at five, now plays violin, guitar, bass, drums, mini-harp, flute — cut her teeth in Toronto’s live music scene, but won over a new legion of fans during the pandemic posting solo bedroom jams, playing every instrument, cut together to create soothing, noodly grooves. Li’s 2022 debut LP, Duality, featured Jay Som, beabadoobee, and Dreamer Isioma, established her mode for creating cinematic dream-pop, and garnered a Juno Award nomination for Alternative Album of the Year. But while the record in part explores her mixed heritage and interiority, Li now concedes its lyrics are “shrouded, poetic, and pretty vague,” adding “I think it feels more exciting to me now to connect with people in a really direct way.”

With tours opening for Japanese Breakfast, Wolf Alice, and beabadobee under her belt, and working with producers Monsune (SZA, Drake) and Andrew Lappin (L’Rain), When a Thought Grows Wings is a sonic and emotional level-up. Weaving her harp-rippled, baroque-pop through with jazz flute and gritty riffs, the album is a testament to Luna Li’s prowess as a charismatic frontperson, songwriter, arranger, and continuously curious multi-instrumentalist. A portrait of Hannah Bussiere Kim on her journey, ever-evolving, the lines between Li and Kim artfully and deliberately blurred.