Music

Anaïs & The Hoops Finds Her Voice on New EP Growing Pains

28 September

What does it sound like when nostalgia, jazz, and indie-pop crash into each other in the best way possible? For Anaïs & The Hoops, the answer is her brand-new EP Growing Pains, a six-track project that dropped September 5th on all streaming platforms.

Anaïs, the Brooklyn-based (by way of San Diego) singer-songwriter with a retro aesthetic and jazz-soaked vocals, has been working on this collection for three years. That’s three years of writing, collaborating, experimenting, and fine-tuning, until the songs finally felt like her. “These songs were some of the first I wrote that truly felt like me,” she shares.

And “her” is pretty special. Anaïs has a way of folding sharp, vulnerable lyrics into melodies that feel like they’ve been hiding in the back of your brain all along. Growing Pains is playful yet reflective, capturing the weird and wonderful tension of growing up while still clutching on to the kid inside.

Of course, it wasn’t a solo mission. Producer Ben Coleman, her bandmates, and a roster of New York musicians left fingerprints all over this EP. Collaboration is kind of the heartbeat of Growing Pains: her mom even pitched in, helping polish the lyrics for her first French-language track, “Passe le temps.” And “Cool” literally started as a poem by her friend Alex Brady. “Basically, every song was touched by someone in or around the live band,” Anaïs says.

The result is xix songs that balance identity, nostalgia, and self-discovery with hooks that stick.

If you’ve been following her journey, you’ll know Anaïs & The Hoops is already making a name for herself. From selling out her own shows to performing at Toronto’s NXNE Festival and opening for Jade Bird and Thunder Jackson, she’s steadily proving climbing the ranks in the indie-pop scene.

And she’s not slowing down. To celebrate Growing Pains, Anaïs & The Hoops is set took the stage at NYC’s Nightclub 101 on Friday, September 5th. And if you weren’t able to catch the show, hit play on Growing Pains.