Photos: Anso Baya Announces Debut Album WATCH THE STARS

French independent singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and producer Anso Baya has announced her debut album, WATCH THE STARS, out February 26, 2027 via her independent label, SCARLIGHT RECORDS. Across eight songs, the artist writes about the people we lose and the ones we hold onto for too long, with the death of her father as the record's emotional core. Yet, it's not just a 'grief album'; with a dreamy sonic palette that feels getting lost in the wind, and lyrics that twist each reflection into tensions between desire, materialism, love, faith, hope, and solace, Baya searches for some kind of peace when the stories we once relied on stop holding together.

The independent pop-rock musician also shares the titular track 'WATCH THE STARS', which serves as the listener's introduction to Baya's relationship with her late father, as well as the tension between absence and grief one feels when they lose a loved one. 'Loss is rarely as simple or peaceful as we would like it to be. It can leave behind unresolved feelings and questions that may never have clear answers,' she admits.

While the song was born from a distinct moment in her life, she began to accept that the emotions surrounding her grief were much more complex. 'I didn't want to simply write a grief song that said, 'I miss someone',' she adds. 'I was interested in everything that can exist around loss: the feeling of helplessness, the questions, the responsibilities, the silences, and what it feels like to be left alone trying to save someone you love.'

Much of the song's lyrics are left intentionally unexplained, letting Baya's sweeping orchestral compositions and pop rock band ascend from places of conflict into something grander.

'WATCH THE STARS' is accompanied by a new music video directed by Antoine Bal and produced by Marie Bordaz, who brought Anso Baya's lyrics to life in a dreamy film that transforms fleeting memories into tangible objects. 'We worked to translate what I had in my head into images that could suggest loss without forcing the emotion,' says the artist.

They built the film around two, contrasting worlds: a cold, desolate concrete building and a golden, warm forest. 'A bed moves through both as a quiet symbol — first suggesting a presence, then an absence,' Baya notes. 'By the end, the camera leaves the ground behind and looks toward the sky. I wanted the video to feel the way the song feels to me: intimate and painful, but ultimately reaching toward light.'

Anso Baya wrote and composed the entirety of WATCH THE STARS, produced most of the album, and shaped its artistic direction. 'I approach each project with an overall vision,' she says. 'I don't make music simply for the sake of making songs; I like to build a world around them and think about how a song should sound, what it is trying to say, how it should be produced and arranged, and the images that can exist alongside it.'

Her cinematic approach to music shapes the structure of the album itself. For the artist, a song has to be allowed to reach the end of its narrative, both musically and lyrically, even when that means moving beyond conventional formats. 'GOLD', for example, runs for nearly seven minutes: its length is part of the journey rather than something to be corrected.

But the record also carries the imprint of the people she encountered while making it. Among the earliest was Kevin Lika, a producer and drummer from the South of France. In his small studio, she was given the opportunity to learn alongside him, experiment, and begin turning some of her demos into fully realized productions. Together, they produced and arranged 'WATCH THE STARS' and 'DOWNTOWN' and co-produced 'DESIRE'; Lika also plays keyboards and drums across those songs and 'GOLD'.

Franck Claudel — a producer, singer and guitarist — brought another color to the record. His knowledge of country and folk music particularly shaped 'PEACE,' which he produced and arranged with Baya, playing guitars and bass on the track. Franck also plays guitar on 'WATCH THE STARS' and contributed to the arrangements and guitars on 'DESIRE.'

The drums on 'PEACE' were played by American session musician Brian Griffin (Lana Del Rey, Brandi Carlile, The Black Crowes, The Chicks), whose career crosses the roots, rock and Americana worlds that resonate through the song. The album was ultimately entrusted to Romain Dupont for mixing and Alex Gopher for mastering at Translab in Paris, giving the record its final sonic shape.

The collaborative process matters to Anso Baya: WATCH THE STARS remains her record, but certain songs found their final form through the people who became part of them. According to her, 'I love working with musicians, producers and creatives who can bring their own sensibility, challenge or expand my ideas, and take a song somewhere I might not have reached on my own. What matters to me is having a strong vision while leaving enough space for the right collaborations to help it evolve.'

WATCH THE STARS will be released on February 26, 2027, via Baya's independent label SCARLIGHT RECORDS.

Tracklist

01. THE LIGHT

02. WATCH THE STARS

03. GOLD

04. DOWNTOWN

05. DESIRE

06. TIPTOES

07. PEACE

08. LIFT YOUR EYES

About Anso Baya

Anso Baya is a singer-songwriter, producer, artistic director and multi-instrumentalist whose music moves somewhere between alternative pop, indie rock, folk and songwriting, with country and Americana holding a particular place among the sounds that have shaped her musical sensibility. She started playing guitar at a very young age and has been making music for more than twenty years, gradually expanding her language to piano, keyboards, arranging and production. Her listening has always been deeply eclectic, but rather than placing those influences side by side, Anso absorbs them and brings them back into a world of her own.

For a long time, Anso refused to release songs simply for the sake of putting music out. She first wanted to become capable of making records that genuinely sounded like what she heard in her head. She spent years developing her songwriting and production skills, eventually building her own studio to gain that freedom.

Anso has always thought about music in images. To her, a song is a scene, sometimes almost an entire film: a setting, a light, characters, a progression and an ending. A song might begin with a line, a melody, a sound or a mental image, but she is always trying to build a complete world around it. That approach also explains her relatively free relationship with format: a song should last for as long as it needs to finish what it is trying to say.

After years of building the project independently, she founded Scarlight Records in 2026 to develop and release her music on her own terms. She writes and composes her songs, produces much of her own work and directs the artistic world around it, while seeing collaboration as an essential part of the process whenever another musician or producer can take a song somewhere she could not have reached alone.

Her debut album, WATCH THE STARS, marks the beginning of that new chapter. What comes next is meant to exist as much onstage as it does in the studio. Anso wants to build a fully realized live show, tour and play her music in front of audiences, while continuing to push further into music production and visual direction. She sees music videos, performances and longer-form visual pieces as extensions of the songs, with the ambition of gradually developing genuine short films around her music.

For Anso, songwriting, composition, production, performance and image are not separate disciplines. They are simply different ways of telling the same story.

Photo Credit: Antoine Vigier | Download hi-res image

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