HAYLA built her name on euphoric EDM choruses written to be shouted in unison.Her new album, DARK, asks a question most singer-songwriters dare not confront: what happens to a voice built for festival crowds once it’s finally alone in a room? Ad 0:00 Click for sound 0:00 / 0:00 When the Grammy-nominated vocal powerhouse released ‘Where You Are’ with John Summit over three years ago, she instantaneously became a household name in the global dance music community.
Her debut album DUSK followed in late-2024, further entrenching her as a coveted, fan-favorite festival performer.On her sophomore album DARK, HAYLA walks off those massive stages, lets her eyes adjust to the lasers, and starts telling the truth.
Dance music vocalists rarely admit they were performing happiness, but the new collection is one long, searing confession.“I wrote this album in the darkest period of my life,” she said.
“A time when I wasn’t sure if I knew how to vocalize my feelings and what I had been through.” The shift will remind real music ball-knowers of the leap Robyn made from the dancefloor purge of ‘Dancing On My Own’ to the exposed vulnerability of Honey eight years later, or when Lorde traded the fireworks of Melodrama for the sunbaked exhale of Solar Power.Dissociation has its own sound and it’s devastating in DARK, which proves that sometimes the bravest thing a voice can do isn’t belt louder, but admit it was shaking the whole time.
HAYLA’s version of that transformation arrives on ‘Heal,’ the album’s opener, where a broken radio tuner drifts in and out like a heartbeat that hasn’t decided yet whether it wants to keep going.“I want you to heal the parts of me that no one loved,” she pleads over haunting keys.
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