Photo: Travys Owen

Valerie June announces new album, shares video for lead single “Joy, Joy!”

Valerie June will release her latest album, Owls, Omens, and Oracles on April 11 via Concord. Produced by M. Ward, the album features collaborations with The Blind Boys of Alabama and Norah Jones. The GRAMMY-nominated multi-instrumentalist looks to focus on personal manifestations and the individual journeys we all take to find our place in the world across these new songs. The record allows June to dig around in the dirt surrounding her ancestral roots, finding magic and laughter and honesty in her familial histories. 

For our introduction to Owls, Omens, and Oracles, she had shared “Joy, Joy!”, a musical act of affirmation and support for everyone who thinks that it’s impossible to take one more step. Against a curiously limber cross-section of different genres, she extols the virtue of finding that one thing that fills your heart with joy and focusing on it until the weight of the world is a distant memory. It has an old-school soul bounce to it, but the occasional roar of raucous guitars helps to imprint her words and their profound meaning on our souls. If you can discover that sense of freedom from the burdens surrounding you, the rest will follow in time.

Everyone has felt moments of darkness, depression, anxiety, stress, ailments, or pain,” explains June. “Some say it takes mud to have a lotus flower. This song reflects on the hard times we might face: to fail, to fall, to lose, to be held down, to be silenced, to be shut out yet still hold onto a purely innocent and childlike joy. I come from a heritage of ancestors who lived this truth by inventing blues music. Generations after they’ve gone, the inner joy they instilled in us radiates and lifts cultures throughout the world. From the world to home, what would a city council focused on inspiring inner joy for all of a town’s citizens look like? As the times are changing across the planet, what would it look like to collectively activate our superpowers of joy?

Watch the Taylor Washington-directed clip below.

 

Owls, Omens, and Oracles is due out April 11 via Concord. You can pre-order the album here. Follow her on Facebook, X, and Instagram