Alt-country singer-songwriter Lizzie No has a new album called Halfsies coming in January. This week they promoted the release with “The Heartbreak Store,” a lovely little ballad that glides through its three and a half minutes. No’s tender vocals are the star here, especially when matched with lyrics as eyebrow-raising as opening line “The cashier knows the truth.”

Here’s what No has to say about the song:

If you walk around New York City with a broken heart and your eyes open, you might be lucky enough to see a storefront window opening with a cashier peeking out. You may offer this person the relic of your lost love (a t-shirt that still smells like him, the keys to an apartment where you once lived, a guitar they gave you which you never learned to play, a book with a particular postcard tucked in between the pages), and they may invite you to step behind the door and down the long staircase to the basement. In this velvet-walled speakeasy are a dozen other rejects who have set their burdens down. This is country music, so dancing and crying are both encouraged. Heaven is a honky tonk full of queer people who have stopped being ashamed.

Annalise Lockhart directed a video for “The Heartbreak Store” at the Jalopy Theatre in Brooklyn, and No has a statement about that too:

When I wrote “The Heartbreak Store,” I envisioned a mystical place where I could bring all the detritus of lost loves. It was a place that lived in my imagination only. Then, in 2022, I went on the round-up tour with lavender country and a crew of queer country artists (including Paisley Fields, who dazzles in the music video). every night of that tour was my vision in real life. The way Patrick Haggerty fostered queer community was remarkable. At the end of the show, when we played the ahead-of-its-time coming out hymn, “Lavender Country,” Patrick would go out into the crowd and get the shy folks to dance. There are tears in my eyes thinking about it now. He taught me that making music isn’t about promoting yourself. It’s about bringing people together and saying “you belong here. I see you here. I embrace you here.” When he said “y’all come out, my dears,” he meant it. Whatever I do as an artist and activist, I am steering towards that same north star of transparency, courage, and compassion. We absolutely had to shoot this video at the Jalopy Theatre in Brooklyn. It is a haven for all kinds of old-time musicians and alt-country freaks and two-steppers and folkies.

Watch below, where you can also hear the rousing prior single “Lagunita.”

Halfsies is out 1/19 via Thirty Tigers/Miss Freedomland.