Zolita has always viewed her songwriting through the lens of a camera, envisioning how each lyric and note might play out on screen. While beginning her career in music, the multi-hyphenate artist was sharpening her filmmaking skills at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. Marrying these two artistic mediums into vibrant, narrative-driven music videos, Zolita’s unique approach to storytelling has earned her hundreds of millions of streams, a sold-out headline tour and a fanbase captivated by the rich characters she brings to life. From the debut of her first song and viral video, to the breakout success of her “Somebody I F*cked Once” Trilogy in 2022 and now to her upcoming project, Queen of Hearts, her passionate and unapologetic approach to visual storytelling is at the core of her artistic identity.

Zolita’s forthcoming sophomore album, Queen of Hearts, is built around a pair of equally ambitious themes. The first offers a bold celebration of queer love, joy and acceptance— an invitation for her fans to embrace their individuality and live authentically. The other offers a more personal, introspective meditation on her past relationships. “I feel like I got to explore things that I had never written about before—things that maybe I was a little bit afraid to write about,” she says. This vulnerability and honesty in her songwriting is a moment that the artist born Zoë Hoetzel has been building toward for a long time.

The project’s first single, “Bloodstream,” a gauzy track about the intense feeling of “wanting to crawl into somebody’s skin and know everything about them,” marks the beginning of the Queen of Hearts visual era. After Zolita read about the love story between Mariana Varela and Fabiola Valentín—former Miss Universe contestants who met and fell in love at a beauty pageant—she dove into writing a script inspired by them. “I was so intrigued by their story,” she recalls. “I was obsessed with the idea that these two women found each other in an environment that seems so heteronormative and ‘traditionally’ feminine.” The resulting short film, which Zolita wrote, produced, directed and edited, combines that fascination with her penchant for showcasing and uplifting queer relationships.

The female, non-binary and LGBTQIA+ led cast and crew included Zolita’s co-star, Kyra Green, who made headlines when she paired up with a woman on Love Island Games in 2023. “It felt so natural to have her be a part of this project,” says Zolita. “In the film, she ends up choosing me at the end instead of the crown, which mirrors her own life really beautifully.” Featuring other notable guest stars and comedians as pageant queens, the short film offers only a preview of Zolita’s feature length ambitions.

Continuing to showcase themes of happiness and self-acceptance within the LGBTQIA+ community, songs “All Girls Go To Heaven” and “Small Town Scandal” are spirited but meaningful additions to Queen of Hearts. The former, a heavy-hitting and uplifting anthem, encourages listeners to embrace who they are and live without fear. The latter finds Zolita showcasing her love of country music and putting her own spin on the genre. “I listen to so much country music in my personal life and I grew up playing bluegrass,” she says. “It’s always found its way into my songwriting, but it’s more sonically present on this record. I go to a queer line-dancing night in Los Angeles and I wanted to write a song specifically for that.”

Elsewhere, she tackles heavier topics like the pain of loving addicts (the gently swaying “No One Tells You No When You’re Beautiful”) and the terrifying indecision of not knowing whether a relationship is meant to last (the heartbreaking “What If”). The most inward-looking track, though, is the gut wrenching “Grown Up.” A blistering indictment of a past relationship, Zolita sings “I don’t get how you were having fun, I was way too young,” the music gathering fury with each repetition of the lyric. “‘Grown Up’ is definitely the heaviest song on the album,” she adds. “It’s about a situation in my life that I never thought I was going to write about—or talk about. But it’s something that many women in my life have gone through in one way or another.”

This deepened honesty and vulnerability within her music showcases just how much Zolita has been emboldened by the strong bond she has with her fans. “I’ve always felt so lucky because my fanbase is primarily queer, so most of my experiences with them have had to do with that,” she says. “They’re not just loving my music—it’s, ‘You helped me come out,’ or, ‘You helped me realize who I was.’ That has given my whole life a very different level of meaning and purpose.”