Alayna doesn’t mind sitting in the in-between. She doesn’t rush over silence in conversation, preferring to wait for the right words to make themselves clear before speaking. Watching her mind work in that quiet pause, it almost feels as though she’s hovering just above the rest of the world, taking it all in, processing, endlessly transforming.

Alayna’s new album, Set Her Free (out February 13 via Nettwerk), could not have been written by anyone else for this reason: her singular observational skill. alayna was feeling burned out after the self-excavation that was making and releasing her first album, Self Portrait of a Woman Unravelling, back in 2023