With every new album an artist makes, there’s an evolution, another chapter. But for Zella Day—her new record, Sunday In Heaven, is a whole other book. It’s not so much that it’s a step away from her debut Kicker—although this new record’s expansiveness, ambition, and bare-bones intimacy is significant. It’s that Zella has entered a new era personally, and the effect of this on her music is pronounced and powerful, creating an album that is lightyears forward in sound and scope from its predecessor.

“I needed something like a mantra I could repeat to myself, the more I sing it the more I’ll believe it,” Zella explains. “It’s up to us to decide whether or not we are going to let certain challenges define our lives,” she continues. Truly, if Sunday In Heaven is anything, it is the pure sound of a woman choosing how and who she wants to be in the world on her own terms; a record for moving forward out of darkness into light; for creating your own beautiful, sparkling reality exactly as you are. Heaven, indeed.