Maiah Wynne - Into The Waves
There is a particular kind of intimacy that comes from hearing an artist build a record almost entirely from the inside out. On Into The Waves, which will be released on September 25, 2026, via Kscope Records, Maiah Wynne turns uncertainty, isolation, movement, and self-doubt into an immersive collection of twelve songs that feels less like a conventional album than a world gradually revealing itself. Written, self-produced, and largely recorded by Wynne, the record captures an artist in motion—physically, emotionally and creatively—while refusing to let any one genre define where that movement should lead.
The result is a remarkably fluid album, one that moves between folk-rooted songwriting, atmospheric alternative rock, and expansive indie pop without ever sounding as though Wynne is consciously trying to bridge those worlds. Instead, they simply coexist. Melody, texture, and emotion determine the destination.
That freedom is central to Wynne's identity. A singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer, and visual artist, she has spent much of her life translating personal experience into music. Into The Waves finds her doing so on an unusually ambitious scale. More than a dozen instruments are performed by Wynne across the record, while an expansive cast of collaborators adds further dimension: cellist Bethany Joyce, violinist Avelyn Reynolds, guitarist Brooks Berg, drummers Adam Brzycki and Randy Cooke, flugelhorn player Henry Sheppard, guest vocalist Dan Avidan and, most notably, Rush guitarist Alex Lifeson.
Lifeson's presence inevitably connects Into The Waves to Wynne's work with Envy of None, but his contributions never overwhelm the album's distinctly personal center. Instead, his guitar becomes another colour within a much larger palette. His admiration for their creative relationship is telling; speaking to Rolling Stone, Lifeson described Wynne as inspiring him in a way he had never experienced with another musician. That chemistry is audible without ever turning the record into a showcase for celebrity collaboration.
If anything, Into The Waves is most powerful when its many moving parts disappear into the songs themselves. “Nothing Stays the Same” establishes the album's central philosophy immediately. Change isn't treated as an abstract concept here; it is something unavoidable, sometimes frightening, and sometimes necessary. The album was written during a period in which Wynne was rebuilding her life following years of isolation, relocating, returning to education, and embarking on her first international tour. Those circumstances give the record's recurring themes of uncertainty and transition considerable weight.
“Satellites,” “In a Dream,” and “Creatures in the Night” expand that emotional landscape, with Wynne using atmosphere as an extension of the songwriting rather than using it as decoration. There is a dreamlike quality to the album, but it is never weightless. Beneath the spacious arrangements is a persistent tension—the feeling of someone trying to find solid ground while accepting that the landscape around them is constantly changing.
“False Gods” continues that examination of uncertainty, while “Another Step” turns the album's collaborative philosophy into something tangible. Dan Avidan contributes backing vocals, Lifeson adds guitar, Randy Cooke provides drums, and Brooks Berg fills out the guitars, with Justin Abel mixing the track and helping bring its many pieces together. It is an especially fitting song for a record made under circumstances that often required Wynne to work remotely, turning hotel rooms into makeshift studios and relying on musicians to send their parts from wherever they happened to be.
That fragmented method could easily have produced a disjointed record. Instead, Abel's mixing and additional production help Into The Waves retain a coherent sonic identity, while Alan Douches' mastering gives the finished album the final polish needed to let its atmospheric details breathe.
One of the record's most compelling moments is also one of its oldest. Wynne wrote “See the Water” when she was just sixteen, shortly after receiving a dulcimer. She describes the song as a manifestation of her inner critic—an internal voice transformed into a character that follows and haunts her. The imagery of water and drowning gives the song a physical dimension, turning insecurity into something almost tangible.
Hearing that composition finally receive the studio treatment Wynne had imagined for it gives the album one of its strongest connections between past and present. The teenage songwriter and the adult artist meet in the same song, separated by years of experience but united by the same emotional truth.
“Underwater” naturally extends that aquatic imagery, while “Don't Want to Say Goodbye” and “Breathe” explore the vulnerability of letting go. The latter is particularly effective in the way it transforms emotional overload into something meditative. Rather than attempting to overpower difficult feelings, Wynne creates enough space around them to allow them to exist.
That approach is arguably the defining characteristic of Into The Waves. Even when the subject matter becomes heavy, the music rarely feels claustrophobic. Wynne understands that atmosphere can provide distance as well as immersion. Her arrangements give difficult thoughts room to echo.
“Don't Wait” and “Girl Dinner” bring the album toward its conclusion without suggesting that every question raised along the way has been neatly resolved. That feels appropriate. Into The Waves isn't a record about arriving at some permanent state of certainty. It is about learning to move while uncertainty remains.
Wynne's visual work reinforces that sense of total authorship. Her direction and editing of the “See the Water” video, along with her editing work on “Breathe,” demonstrate that the world of Into The Waves extends beyond the music itself. Every component—songwriting, instrumentation, production, imagery, and the performance—is part of the same creative language.
That makes the album feel deeply personal without becoming insular. Wynne takes experiences that are specific to her—isolation, anxiety, self-doubt, relocation, growth, and the disorienting process of starting over—and gives them enough space for listeners to find their own reflections within them.
Into The Waves ultimately succeeds because it sounds like an artist following her instincts rather than following a formula. Folk intimacy can sit beside alternative rock weight; orchestral textures can meet electronic atmosphere; Lifeson's guitar can share space with a dulcimer-born composition written decades earlier in spirit, if not literally. Nothing feels forced into place at all.
There is a fitting contradiction at the heart of the album: Into The Waves is a record about instability that sounds remarkably assured. Wynne doesn't pretend that change is comfortable or that moving forward means leaving every difficult feeling behind. Instead, she embraces the uncertainty and turns it into sound.
By the time Into The Waves reaches its final moments, the journey feels less like an escape from turbulence than an acceptance of it. Wynne isn't trying to calm the waves so much as learn how to move through them. That makes this an absorbing new chapter for an artist who has clearly decided that the most interesting destination is wherever the music takes her next.
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