Today, Friday June 12, Kalia Vandever — the trombonist, composer, and vocalist who has been celebrated as one of the leading lights of a “new class of jazz artists pushing the music forward” (NPR) for their cinematic quartet work and the synthetic, gauze-like drone of their solo material — releases Mana, their debut album for International Anthem, on LP, CD, and digital download. They also share a new streaming single today – “Holding” – with the full album to follow on all streaming platforms June 30.

Listen to “Holding” and purchase Mana here.

Throughout 2026, Kalia Vandever will be touring in support of Mana, with solo album release performances set for LA at 2200 Arts + Archives, Philadelphia at Solar Myth, and Washington D.C. at Rhizome. From June 17 to 28, Vandever will be performing as part of the Wehiwehi Residency at Shangri La in Honolulu, HI. All current dates and more info below. Watch live performances of album standouts “Waiting” and “Hubbard Road,” filmed live at International Anthem’s Chicago HQ, The Land School.

Vandever’s music has quickly and widely gained traction in the last few years despite the fact that their style has been consistently difficult to pin down. Mana is their latest evolution: solo trombone filtered through a well-dialed pedalboard and manipulated live, paired with spare piano à la late-career work of Ryuichi Sakamoto for seven tracks of sometimes placid, sometimes disquieting atmospheres. The electroacoustic interplay simultaneously echoes and transforms the long-note melodicism of their melancholic brass work; and the whole sound is emotively augmented with head-on, unambiguous, and deeply personal sung lyrics — a particularly fresh move for Vandever.

For incorporating vocals into their sound world, the turning point came when they started getting more opportunities to play outside of the context of the jazz world. Some opportunities came in the form of playing in backing bands for pop stars (Harry Styles) or indie-rock mainstays (Japanese Breakfast), but the true exploration started while performing solo, on tour opening for folk singer Haley Heynderickx. For Vandever, seeing a very different kind of crowd from the stage night after night helped them cement a bravery about singing and sharing intimate, lyric-centered pieces. “I was considering that they might gravitate more toward words,” says Vandever, “so I thought I could try these songs that I had been developing, that maybe I was feeling a little nervous to share.”

The heart of Mana also sees Vandever shedding new light onto their personal connection to Hawaiian mythology, ancestry and how it relates to their musical expression — a meeting of their familial and professional life that represents a sort of closing of a circle. Mana, which in Hawaiian means “foundational, supernatural, or divine power and strength,” reveals more of their voice and words, drawing from yearning, loss, and bewilderment.

Vandever writes in the album’s liner notes: “In modern culture, mana can be felt, cultivated, and strengthened as you grow closer to your inner self, native land, and ancestral power. I carry the stories, wisdom, and care of my ancestors as I navigate grief, love, community, and exploration, and feel my sense of mana deepening when I play for them.

“Holding,” the final song on Mana, available today on all platforms alongside an animated visualizer by Nespy5euro, is Vandever’s version of a breakup song. Swirling, suspended chords pile up beneath a trombone-led intro, concentrating into droning clusters of soft synth-like sound. These frenetic yet melodically unchanging tones become a gentle beeswarm bed for Vandever’s simple and direct lyricism, the most apparent point of new growth on the album itself, delivered with the same floating confidence as their trombone work:

Holding on to you
Will you hold me til the end?
Will you release me?
I will release you
I am holding