About the Artist
New Zealand singer-songwriter alayna crafts emotive pop, soul, and R&B with vivid storytelling and expressive vocals. Her sophomore album Set Her Free, released February 13, 2026 via Nettwerk Music Group, is a 13-track record reflecting on relationships, personal growth, and the emotional shifts that come with connection. Through detailed lyrics and controlled delivery, she creates songs that feel grounded, intentional, and deeply connected to lived experience while maintaining a polished contemporary edge.
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The Album
Love of My Life opens on soft, delicate strings that drift in like a gentle breeze as you close your eyes into the sunlight. “Its as if I materialize in front of someone else’s eyes,” speaks honestly of how love can make you feel whole when you feel anything but. Next, I See You is brighter, in the way that when you first look into someone’s eyes and they shine back at you with glitter. Then, But It’s Lonely, with its soft muted acoustics and warm vocals sounds like a grey sweater you keep wearing even if it doesn’t warm you all the way up.
After that, this one lyric, “Love is bigger than my little bones,” captures all that Hold Me wants to tell you. Right then, Softly with its slow pulsing beats, reminds you that your heart still beats even after it breaks. “And all of the fragments of it form, the sediment, I’m standing on,” stands as one of the most poetic lyrics I have ever come across. Meanwhile, Braveheart moves slowly, taking steps that grow bigger as the song continues; it bleeds, it feels confused, but it keeps walking.
Subsequently, Animal, with its anticipatory melody, pulls you in seductively; it is sultry but doesn’t burn like fire—it’s an ember instead, and you step right on it. While Small Things is darker and deeper with a richer melody. The song feels seconds away from tears, and then unexpectedly someone hands you a tissue, touching your heart square in the chest. Then, Love You More wraps you quietly and softly, holding you and asking for nothing except letting someone love you unconditionally, more than you do them.
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In a similar beat, Mother’s Mother is that hand, sometimes on your back, sometimes intertwined and sometimes pulling you forward, but it’s always there, guiding you, growing you. Next, Tiny Spaces, explores the little things about love that seep into your soul, making tiny rooms for themselves until one day suddenly, you’re full. While, Your Way Home (Interlude) with deep violins and layered instruments, pours over you and fills you with longing for familiar streets.
Lastly, Set Her Free, the title track, rises on breathy, breathtaking vocals that break between sounds like wings learning to fly for the first time. Finally, soul pours through every sound and word on this album. alayna brings a project set free straight from her heart, and in doing so she sets emotions in motion that unfurl beautifully as you listen. Set Her Free walks through life in shapes of love—how it binds you and how it sets you free—making this one of her most remarkable releases yet.
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Disclaimer: This release was brought to you by a promotional campaign by the artist, PR, or management label.
Figuring out my path while actively plotting ten others. Serious about my dreams with somewhat chaotic ambition. Will do anything for cats.
