Yebba releases "Yellow Eyes"

Yebba announces her second studio album Jean, arriving March 6th, and shares its first single “Yellow Eyes.” Produced by John Rooney, “Yellow Eyes” is Yebba first single in two and a half years that offers a glimpse into a new artistic era that is defined by clarity and a deepened connection to her roots.

Marking her first full-length since her 2021 debut album Dawn, Jean introduces a more intimate and self-possessed chapter in her songwriting. For this project, Yebba returned to her Southern roots and created the album entirely on her own time, a choice that brings a palpable sense of grounding and creative freedom to the music. That spirit resonates throughout the record, even as it traverses a wide-ranging sonic landscape.

Listen to “Yellow Eyes” and stay tuned for more music coming from Yebba very soon.

More about Yebba and Jean:

Yebba has never sung from a safe distance. From the moment her voice first cut through the industry’s noise, it carried a spiritual charge and ease that felt immediately singular: malleable, vulnerable, and unmistakably hers. The Arkansas-born singer, raised in church and shaped by gospel from childhood, emerged as one of the most revered vocalists of her generation, carried by sweet sincerity.

When she first appeared in the late 2010s, musicians took notice immediately. She became your favorite artist’s favorite artist – technical yet raw, rooted yet unpredictable. Long before her own albums framed her narrative, Yebba’s voice was already sprinkled through the airwaves. Her breakout features signaled a vocalist capable of elevating any room she entered, lending depth and elasticity to tracks with artists like Ed Sheeran, PJ Morton, Drake, AAP Rocky, and more.

Her 2021 debut album, Dawn, arrived in the shadow of her mother’s death and introduced the world to an artist capable of transforming loss and emotion into language. The album earned her a Grammy nomination for Best Traditional R&B Performance and established her as a storyteller unafraid of spiritual and emotional excavation. The world met her through the buds of mourning. Jean is the bloom that follows.

Written and perfected over five years across Arkansas, Dallas, and New York’s historic Electric Lady Studios, Jean documents what Yebba calls her “adulting years” (the stretch of life where you realize no one fully knows what they’re doing, and you are both more healed and more disoriented than you expected to be). Now 31, she laughs at the idea of having arrived anywhere definitive. “The more I felt healed, the more lost I felt,” she admits. Without longing and desperation driving her forward, ambition itself had to be redefined. What she found in the process was freedom.

Releasing this album required surrender. And surrender requires a kind of letting go. In this case, letting go of expectation, of the idea that grief resolves neatly, and of the fear of oversharing. “It’s embarrassing to be an artist,” she laughs. “It’s embarrassing to overshare things that are very personal.” But rather than retreat, she chose to do so artfully and intentionally, crafting songs sturdy enough to carry her vulnerability alongside faithful and beloved collaborators like her co-producer John Rooney and composer James Francies.

The album takes its name from her late grandmother, Jean – a strong, sharp-witted woman who helped raise her and whose steady presence left a lasting imprint. Naming the project after her allowed Yebba to honor someone who gave her permission to be fully herself. Where previous grief fractured her faith and sense of self, this remembrance feels grounding. It’s less about heartbreak and more about inheritance: passed down strength, humor, and independence.

The project’s first single, “Yellow Eyes,” opens the door to this new chapter. Layered and tender, the song holds onto the sweetness of memory without trying to live there permanently. It lingers in reflection while allowing forward motion; nostalgia balanced with quiet acceptance. Throughout Jean, Yebba deliberately steps back vocally. “I wanted to experience singing in a different way than I had before,” she says. She lets the words breathe, and the restraint feels intentional – a sign of trust, in herself and her craft.

Sonically, the album mirrors the freedom it honors. There are whisper-sung guitar songs and full-band moments that stretch wide. “I’ve always wanted to be a band girl,” she says, and here she allows herself that fullness. Gospel conviction remains (you can hear it in phrasing, and the way she bends notes until they confess something) but it coexists with Delta blues textures, folk edges, indie looseness, and country undertones. Her formative influences echo through it all: Smokie Norful’s devotion, Aretha Franklin’s communicative clarity, Dinah Washington’s intuitive framing, Mariah Carey’s elasticity, the grit of Mississippi Fred McDowell and Sonny Boy Williamson, the storytelling of Shania Twain, and more. It is not genre-bound – it’s instinctive and explorative.

Much of the record was created at home or places that felt like it. She returned to her hometown to begin writing, built a home studio in Dallas where she currently resides, and completed her sessions at the classic Electric Lady, a studio she reveres. The process was insular by design. Less influenced by outside noise, Yebba sent the guards at the gates of her thoughts home, and told herself it was safe to explore.

Forgiveness sits at the album’s core. She sings, “I stuck to my guns and God made good on his promise,” as quiet testimony. “All of it is worship,” she says. On Jean, faith, like her willingness to explore country music, feels less inherited and more chosen.

Onstage, Jean will expand. The quiet moments will stretch, the band will swell, and a holy exchange will ensue as the project takes on new life.

If Yebba’s arrival introduced her as a once-in-a-generation voice, and Dawn established her as an artist capable of building beauty from devastation, Jean feels like reclamation. A return to adoring her craft – and herself. A return to adoring her craft, and herself. A refusal to let grief be the final chapter, and a reminder that healing is not a straight line toward resolution, but an ongoing conversation with God and love; it’s romantic, spiritual, familial, and self-directed. As the sole writer, this project is pure, and (of course) personal.

“Yellow Eyes” is the first glimpse into that conversation – tender, buoyant, and optimistic while remembering “the way that it was.”