Toronto musician Sandra Bouza shares her new album A Sound In The Dark, out now on all digital streaming platforms. Listen here.
To mark the occasion, Sandra is also releasing the video for the album’s title track—an empowering song about not being afraid to take chances in life.
“My inspiration for this song was skinny dipping,” says Sandra. “I was at an artist residency on Halls Island, and decided to go skinny dipping on a beautiful clear night. I heard a sound in the dark and got scared and jumped out of the water and went back up to the cabin. I started thinking about all the times in my life that I let fear take away really beautiful, or potentially beautiful moments, or starting my career so late, or not falling in love, and I decided I didn’t want to let fear have that control anymore. So I wrote this song and got back in the water the next night. I thought it was a perfect name for the album because it really signified where I feel I am in my life right now, maybe not every day, but where I want to, and strive to be, every day.”
Known as a musical shapeshifter, playing R&B, Soul, Rock, and everything in between, Sandra has a lot to offer through her music and life experience. Having spent a large part of her life in Spain, as well as travelling to far corners of the world, Sandra’s worldly vision is evident in her songwriting. Sandra lets her stories breathe in songs that are deeply personal.
After years of travelling, Sandra returned to her hometown of Toronto in 2018 and, within her first year back, she won the Toronto Blues Talent search and came second in the city’s prestigious Soul Slam. The early promise of Three Years, her 2018 EP, and Falling Away From Me, her first full-length album that followed in 2020, put everyone on notice that Sandra Bouza was an artist to watch.
Everything came together for Sandra during an artist’s residence on Halls Island, where she wrote most of the material for her upcoming album, A Sound in the Dark. Everyone who’s heard her sing knows that Sandra’s always been a powerful vocalist and a compelling songwriter, but with the new recording, she has truly found her own voice, and the promise of her earlier work has come to full fruition.
“This record is truly me, more me than I have ever been able to give up to this point,” says Sandra. “With the new songs, I share more of myself than I have ever been able to do before.”
You can hear echoes of Etta James and Carla Thomas in Sandra’s powerful and highly nuanced phrasing. And like contemporaries Amy Winehouse and Adele, she’s absorbed a lot from listening to the greats from the golden age of R&B, emerging with a style that is all her own. Gifted with a masterful sense of poise and control, few singers can inhabit a vocal like Sandra does.
A Sound In The Dark is available now on Spotify, Apple Music/iTunes, and other digital retailers and streaming services worldwide. For more information, please visit sandrabouza.com.
