Laeland (Let’s All Embrace Love And Never Die) puts words in motion. The Mississippi-born singer, songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist plucks thoughts, memories, and emotions from his handwritten journals or voice memos and grafts them to bedroom-crafted beats laced with soft acoustic guitar and warm piano. He moves at the speed of late-night inspiration, turning feelings (while they’re still fresh) into cathartic anthems.He forged his relationship with music at barely five-years-old. He went from performing for his family to showing classmates how to sing on-pitch in music class. By junior year of high school, he would craft tracks in his childhood bedroom and upload them online, cooking up beats and playing guitar and piano. Along the way, he caught the attention of fellow Nettwerk signee Snøw, who reached out to him on social media.With support from The Bootleg Boy and more, Laeland made waves in 2019. His breakout single “I’m in love but” [with Snøw] tallied north of 18.7 million Spotify streams and counting. Among other favorites, “summer nights” posted up 12.7 million Spotify streams, while “Traveling Alone” appeared in an episode of Teen Mom 2. At the same time, he co-founded the Stay Inside Collective with Snøw and Skinny Atlas. Toward the end of 2022, Laeland signed to Nettwerk. Under the influence of everything from the music of Frank Ocean, SZA, and Khalid to books such as A Song of Ice and Fire, Maze Runner, and The Hunger Games in addition to The Walking Dead, he began crafting his upcoming studio album with a focus on storytelling. Entitled look at the mess we made, the album is his first with Nettwerk.“I wanted to connect the feeling of randomly dropping a glass to a relationship,” he states. “You think you’ve got a good grip on what’s going on, but something is completely flipped out of your hands into a million pieces. How do we put it back together? It’s an observation. Look at this mess we allowed to happen. What are we going to do about it?”Words by Rick Florino