SPELLLING to Return With Portrait of My Heart

Tia Cabral, the Bay Area performer known best by her stage name SPELLLING, will return with her fourth studio album, Portrait of My Heart, on March 28. One of the best record labels around, Sacred Bones, will put the 11-track LP out into the world, and Cabral is giving us a taste via a title track lead single. “Portrait of My Heart” is startling in its catchiness, etched into existence by a throbbing drum beat, orchestral streaks and Cabral’s falsetto that, at once, is like an intimate flood and a far-away echo. Then, a mark of synth-driven, anthemic poppiness collapses into an immediate, zig-zagging ballast of many voices.

“When the lyrics for the title track came together, it really started to morph everything in this more energetic direction, instead of this more whimsical landscape that I’ve worked with before. It started to become more driven, higher energy, more focused,” Cabral said of “Portrait of My Heart” in a press release. “And I have a big affection for it because of that. I love that it feels like it withstood transformation, which is something I always want to aspire to with things that I make. I want them to have this sense of timelessness. It could exist like this, or like that, or like this, but this is the one for right now.”

Last year, we named Cabral’s The Turning Wheel the 10th-best album of the 2020s so far, and her re-recorded compilation project, SPELLLING & the Mystery School, nabbed an 8.5 rating from critic Devon Chodzin. Watch the music video for “Portrait of My Heart” and check out the album’s artwork, tracklist and SPELLLING’s upcoming tour dates below.