WPGM Commentary: Kaia Laurielle Finds Community And Belonging On ‘Without Hearts’ EP

Without Hearts, There Is No Home is my latest conceptual EP. It follows the themes of home, love, belonging and takes an even wider lens on grief, memory and what love can feel like, unraveling the joys and challenges that come with it.

The EP was put together over a period of years and throughout that time I was thinking about my community, the love that I feel and have for myself and others and how that informs me to navigate in today’s world. I was reading and looking at different excerpts of writing.

From Black writers such as Zora Neale Hurston, Bell Hooks, Alice Walker and Octavia E Butler and their perceptions and stories that exchanged words on love and community. I wanted to create a project that combined my reflections and my personal experiences too.

When I began writing this project, I felt quite isolated and alone. I have lots of people around me but I think I was at a desperate place searching for home not realising that home was within me. And really it’s the different hearts that make a home and those hearts include your own, my loved ones, my neighbours, people that are passing by. It took me a while to figure that out. I wanted that to be the overriding message and something that I work towards.

The project is a message for people who may feel alone and that home and love really resides within you wherever you are.The creative process really began with me and accompanied by keys. I challenged myself with new chord placements and inversions to evoke the right sentiment.

I then worked closely with three producers, one in particular called Miles who co-produced four tracks on the EP. The sessions were really intimate and focused on the fragility of my vocals and how to convey and capture that in the audio. We really took our time to get this across to the listeners and that raw open vulnerability you get when you are going through confused and sad emotions.

However, not all the songs are sad! “KEEP (Take)” and “The River” are songs where I feel I’ve come to a space of self-acceptance and I’m on a path and journey of change and being present in the moment. Those are the last two songs of the EP and I wanted to keep them to the end because that was what I was feeling at the end of the process.

I wrote and produced “The River” by myself because that was the last song I made in 2024 and it to me felt like the cherry on top and the ultimate sonic of where life was at for me at the time. I didn’t want to incorporate any other Producers or any other thoughts in this track because it was really about being present and flowing with the moment- just like the river. If I then added extra influence, I feel it would then take away from the piece and the lyricism.

The project has different songs with different influences so some are a bit more R&B or some are a bit more soulful then some have more of an electronic style. However, the overarching sound is my voice and the project is reflective of the sounds that I enjoy and love and what I was listening to during the making of the EP.

This is my third EP. I feel quite emotional about the overall journey because so much has happened within that time but for me it also feels a rebirth and an awakening. I hope that people can listen and feel awakened and feel that this can be a soundtrack to their day-to-day life and how to move when feeling alone and searching for home and love. Igniting tingles inside of you.

Listen to Without Hearts, There Is No Home below, and stream it elsewhere here.

Words by Kaia Laurielle // Follow her on Instagram + TikTok

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