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Haley Blais is a Vancouver-based singer-songwriter who has turned out defiant scream-into-your-pillow pop songs since 2014. Blais developed a community and fanbase as a teenager almost a decade ago with her diaristic YouTube videos and tender ukulele covers. Since then, Blais has traded the solo ukulele for a guitar and a five-piece band. In 2020, Blais released a debut full-length album of jangly pop anthems, Below the Salt, produced with indie staples Tennis and Louise Burns. The debut amassed millions of streams and avid support from publications like NPR, NYLON, and i-D, leading to sell-out shows in the UK, Europe and USA. Now signed to iconic indie label Arts & Crafts, Haley’s signature sound has matured into a distinct new voice. Her lyrics riff on the joys and banalities of the everyday, the need to break apart and away from an uninspiring life, radical acceptance, and manifesting a world where you feel proud of yourself and who you’re surrounded by. Wisecrack (released September 15, 2023), her sophomore album, was conceived as a conceptual record about the formation of new families amidst the dissolution of her parent’s relationship; Wisecrack is textured and wryly poetic, oscillating somewhere between cherished childhood memories and the creation of a new self. The existential, everyday worries we all contain but rarely share are laid bare across 11 songs exquisitely performed with profundity, grace, and humour. Tongue-in-cheek lines like “I want my therapist to think I’m cool” give the melancholic mood a biting edge. “Can I be responsible for things that I did years ago? / I guess it could be good for just a laugh,” Blais sings — that’s Wisecrack in a nutshell. Funny and raw at the same time.

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