Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter zzzahara has announced their new album, Spiral Your Way Out, out January 10th, 2025, on Lex Records, and shares its lead single/video, “Ghosts.” The followup to their 2023 album, Tender, Spiral Your Way Out sees zzzahara continue to evolve. Emotionally, its foundations are built on scorched earth. The album finds zzzahara in the aftermath of a relationship spent trying to fit someone else’s mold, being jerked around by indecision, and then hitting “emotional rock bottom.”

Made in a three-month burst that let all their pent-up frustrations loose, Spiral Your Way Out is in part a work of self-reclamation, swapping Tender’s meditative state for something fiery and more assertive. “I was going through such a tough time, but I felt like I didn’t have anyone to reach out to,” zzzahara says of the period leading up to the album, which was a chaotic blur spent mostly on tour or in isolation. “When I finally sat down in the studio, I just had all this fucking anger – towards that person for treating me badly, but mostly towards myself for not walking away. I think in that situation I just kind of let things be, and I was mad at myself for letting myself isolate for so long and never putting my foot down. In the end, I just took it all out on the record.”

Lead single “Ghosts” is a highly relatable, stripped-back track about hating and loving the feeling of staying in a toxic relationship, taking a page out of the Scene Aesthetic and Dashboard Confessional playbooks. The vocals take the lead, allowing the most painful emotions to stick out like exposed nails. The 3D-animated video for the track is directed by Hannah Bon and features a 3D-rendered zzzahara trapped in a dream, as things start to get weirder and weirder, with cats singing the song back to them and ghosts appearing out of lava lamps.

zzzahara’s music wades into the deep waters of love, lust, and self-discovery in a part of the world where artifice and authenticity co-exist. Emerging from the heart of LA’s alternative music scene, their sound is raw in feeling and rebellious by nature. Their 2022 debut album, Liminal Spaces, chronicles a coming-of-age in Highland Park, following painful childhood memories through late-night, live-fast coping mechanisms, and the changes the neighborhood has endured over the same period of time. Their 2023 follow-up, Tender, marked a period of slowing down, looking inward, and embracing a softer side of being.

Spiral Your Way Out marks another sonic evolution as much as an emotional one. zzzahara’s songs have always come wrapped in a warm glow that reflects how they were written – namely at home in their bedroom. That glow remains on Spiral Your Way Out, but it also packs an ambitious streak and a gutsy punch. Taking a more collaborative approach than usual, zzzahara worked with a range of producers including Jorge Elbrecht (Japanese Breakfast, No Joy, Sky Ferreira), Sarah Tudzin (boygenius, Cloud Nothings, The Armed), former Ducktails guitarist Alex Craig (Jelani Aryeh / re6ce) and Halsey tour drummer Franco Reid, who helped harness their intimate style of writing and blow it up into something more panoptic. “A lot of the instrumentation is either a group effort or just two of us in the room, so it felt nice to have that weight off my shoulders,” they explain. “It felt comfortable to have them lead or translate what I’d written and make it better.”

There is a certain ease to zzahara’s music that’s rooted in the ebb and flow of their life. They pick up the guitar and write every day, clinging to the most memorable riffs and melodies like lights in the dark. “Music for me is therapeutic,” says zzzahara. After a year of upheaval, zzzahara finally feels “calm.” The musical equivalent to going several rounds on a punching bag, Spiral Your Way Out finds solace between extremes. It licks its wounds in a place where pain and love, healing and abandon, sit side-by-side. If it has a message, it’s one of standing tall in your own shoes – scuffs and all. “That’s what I figured out at the end of this journey: I don’t need all this therapy. I can just be, and it’ll be okay.”