Montréal-based singer/songwriter Alexandra Levy, aka Ada Lea, returns on 4 October with a new EP, notes, featuring four previously unheard songs plus two ("hometown", "heard you") released last summer as a digital single. All six tracks were once contenders for her second album, 2021's one hand on the steering wheel the other sewing a garden – "heard you" was actually a hidden bonus track on the vinyl – and, as Lea says in her description of the record, "[the songs] are their own special entities." She adds:

"Writing forty songs within a concept when I know I’ll only use ten allows me to discover a clearer vision of the kind of world I’m wanting to create for the music. I can’t tell what is missing until I’ve already written it. It’s like when Virginia Woolf said 'a light here required a shadow there.' One idea leads to another, which yields unexpected songs. Obviously, while it’s happening it’s a very ugly and messy process (voice memos, crying, scraps of paper everywhere, an excruciatingly long and meandering soundcloud playlist—just look away, I’m hideous!) so I only see this pattern once the album is finished and there’s some distance. The discarded songs become 'in-between' songs (songs that got me to write song B when I thought I could do with song A)."

Today's release of "come on, baby! be a good girl for the camera" provides the first all-new track from notes, and was inspired by Lea's own experience of "a very challenging tour that took everything out of me." As she explains:

“Over the years, I’ve developed a suspicion that your skin must be made of macho steel to ‘make it’ in the industry – you’ve gotta be able to suck it up, put a nice smile on your face, and do a little dance with a twinkle in your eye. The chorus runs with that belief, in a cheeky, noncommittal and playful way.”

For the music video Lea reached out to photographer Lawrence Farfard, having been a fan of their work for years. Despite never having made a music video before, Farfard took up the challenge, storyboarding a narrative sequence depicting the life and times of a fictional drag queen, Lolly Poppers. As Lea explains:

"It was an eye-opening perspective for me [...] to remember that video, at its core, could be broken down simply, into a series of striking images. From there, things moved quickly and everything fell into place. Lolly Poppers was the natural star shining brightly in the sky, and the fact that we created it together, with such a small group and extremely limited resources, gives me goosebumps. It feels really special, and iconic."

notes tracklist:

1. i-95
2. come on, baby! be a good girl for the camera
3. make me a promise
4. serait-il…?
5. hometown
6. heard you

notes is released through Saddle Creek and Next Door Records. Sharing the same release date is a limited edition 1000-piece puzzle co-created by Lea and artist Flore de Ris and produced by Athena, GA-based company Very Good Puzzle, who have previously collaborated with R.E.M., Drive-By Truckers, and Widespread Panic, among others. Both releases are available to pre-order through Bandcamp.