Helena Deland already has a good bit of music to her name, having released a four-part EP series back in 2018. But we’ve still been waiting on her official full-length debut — and now it appears that wait’s about to end. Last month, she released the song “Lylz,” which seemed to be the harbinger of a bigger project on the horizon. And now, today, she’s announced her debut LP, Someone New, will be out in October.

Here’s what Deland had to say about the album’s background:

Someone New is about paradoxically feeling sick of and unfamiliar with myself. I realized that I associated primarily with what others (real or imagined) projected onto me, and acted in ways to avoid disappointing this projection or imagined expectation. The quest to please and conform distracted me from who I already was and I labored to comply to a normative set of expectations. I noticed my troubled relationship with my body, which escaped my control and gave others so much information it seemed to withhold from me. I sought comfort in romantic relationships, which validated me and where I was free to at least momentarily reinvent myself for the other’s sake. I felt guilty of my privilege, the idea of which my dejection didn’t sit well with, and I was trapped in patterns that grew more and more familiar. I longed to become someone new! I had to look at this critically in order to write songs I thought made the least bit of sense, trying not to give into the tendency to bend myself to integrated expectations and my anxiety to please. The meta delight in this whole story is that the process helped me better recognize what defines me both outwardly and inwardly, and made me somewhat new to myself.

Along with the announcement, Deland has shared the album’s opening and title track. “‘Someone New’ is about the validation and relief from one’s internal world that a romantic encounter can offer, but also about becoming aware that there seems to be an expiry date on that type of opportunity for women,” she said in a statement. “It ambivalently celebrates and condemns the idea of being in one’s ‘prime,’ as it is so rare that youth and self-understanding are simultaneous.” Fittingly enough, “Someone New” is a song of transformation. It’s quiet and restrained in the beginning, but begins to bloom and twist, picking up momentum and layers as it goes. Check it out below.

TRACKLIST:

01 “Someone New”
02 “Truth Nugget”
03 “Dog”
04 “Fruit Pit”
05 “Pale”
06 “Comfort, Edge”
07 “Seven Hours”
08 “Smoking At The Gas Station”
09 “Lylz”
10 “Mid-Practice”
11 “Clown Neutral”
12 “Fill The Rooms”

Someone New is out 10/16 via Luminelle. Pre-order it here.