Hayden Everett Lets the Rain Fall on New Single ‘Angela’
Hayden Everett
There’s a particular kind of honesty that comes from loving somewhere enough to critique it properly. On ‘Angela’, Seattle-based indie-folk songwriter Hayden Everett turns his gaze towards Los Angeles – not as a postcard fantasy, but as a contradiction-rich place that gives as much as it takes.
The single opens 2026 for Everett and introduces So The Sun Can Pour, his debut album due this spring. Light on its feet but sharp in its observations, ‘Angela’ is part satire, part open letter. It’s an anthem built on tension – sunny melodies carrying lyrics that question performative politics, gentrification, and the emotional cost of constant brightness. When Everett sings, “Your politics are cunning, voting loudly to the left but stepping right over the poor”, the line lands with a calm clarity rather than accusation.
That balance – warmth without naivety – runs through the song and the wider project. Hayden Everett has spoken about duality as the emotional backbone of the album: joy and sorrow, summer and winter, love and grief existing not in opposition but in necessity. The refrain “let it rain so the sun can pour” feels less like a slogan and more like a quiet acceptance of emotional weather.
Nature remains a grounding force in Everett’s writing. Much of So The Sun Can Pour was written while solo backpacking during his time working as a tour guide in Glacier National Park. Songs took shape mid-hike, often sung aloud to ward off grizzlies, with stories gathered through solitude and passing conversations. That sense of space carries through the record, which was mixed by Tucker Martine – known for shaping expansive, organic worlds for artists such as Gregory Alan Isakov and Sufjan Stevens.
‘Angela’ also arrives off the back of Friends & Family, a 2025 EP from Hayden Everett that quietly expanded his audience through its intimacy rather than spectacle. With his debut album now in view, he feels poised rather than rushed – an artist letting the work breathe, trusting contrast to do its job.
In a cultural moment that often demands constant optimism, ‘Angela’ stands as a reminder that discomfort, reflection and rain are not things to be smoothed over. Sometimes, they’re what make the light mean something after all.
‘Angela’ is out now. Hayden Everett is set to release his debut album, So The Sun Can Pour, in Spring 2026.