BY BRITTANY DANIELLE for WEEKLY VOLCANO 5/15/26 |
Audiences named Queen of Hearts before the band officially existed. Queen of Hearts is a band made up of already established musicians. Carrie Jennings and Tara Chugh had booked a short West Coast run together from Vancouver, B.C., to Portland under the name “Queen of Hearts Tour,” never intending for it to become anything permanent. Each solo artist had built their own musical identity before they met, but by the end of the tour, people kept asking the same question: When is Queen of Hearts playing again?
Queen of Hearts? But that was the name of the tour, not a band. Though each musician shared harmonies with the others and switched out musical positions to bring more life to one another’s sets, the idea of combining forces officially came from the audience.
“At that point, we hadn’t thought about becoming an official band,” the group says. “We all met for dinner at Karen’s house and started talking about what it would actually look like.”
Now the musical group made up of Jennings, Chugh, Karen Laura Peters, and Thomas Jennings is preparing to release its debut single, “Again,” on May 21. The release marks a more official step into being a band together. “Again” will be available wherever you get your music.
The debut single introduces the dreamy neo-soul sound the group has quietly built through live performances around the Pacific Northwest. Three-part harmonies drift through cello, guitar, keys, and flugelhorn, creating something smoky, intimate, and cinematic without feeling overworked.
Long before Queen of Hearts became a band, the four musicians kept crossing paths through Tacoma and Seattle’s music scene. Karen first met Tara at a networking event in Tacoma and encouraged her to apply for Sofar Sounds Seattle. Later, Tara and Carrie landed on the same Sofar lineup, where Tara waited in Carrie’s merch line just to exchange numbers. Not long after, Tara hired Carrie, Thomas, and Karen for a performance at Tacoma’s Spanish Ballroom, where the collaboration quickly deepened into something larger.
Karen and Tara have since started the education program Momentum Musician, and all four musicians show up to play in or help with one another’s solo projects.
Offstage, the group describes its dynamic through “heartfelt honest conversations, belly laughs, dance breaks, fashion talk, and homemade shared meals.” They jokingly refer to one another by unofficial titles: Tara as the “marketing queen,” Thomas the “sound queen,” Carrie the “booking queen,” and Karen handling logistics and fashion.
That closeness carries directly into “Again.”
Carrie Jennings wrote the song while sitting on her parents’ back porch overlooking Lake Tahoe.
The track circles themes of desire, memory, and emotional repetition with the feeling of returning to something even after it slips away.
“The song is about the cyclical nature of desire and the often unquenchable sensations we feel around love,” the band says. “The lyrics invite us to slow down and take it all in, whether bitter or blissful.”
Its emotional center arrives in the line: “Memories fade like water on my skin, so I get in.”
Rather than building toward a dramatic climax, “Again” lingers in uncertainty, allowing the emotion to unfold slowly. Jennings brought in the lyrics and melody first, while the rest of the band shaped the arrangement around her writing, layering harmonies and instrumentation collaboratively.
Recording took place over several sessions at the University of Washington studio, where Thomas Jennings, a UW graduate student, also served as recording engineer. The single was later mixed by Sam Cook-Stuntz of Homespun Audio in Ballard, who also contributed bass, and mastered by Rachel Field at Resonant Mastering in Seattle.
If “Again” is any indication, Queen of Hearts isn’t interested in rushing intimacy. The band lets its songs unfold slowly the way memories do.
Keep an eye out for Queen of Hearts this summer by following the band on Instagram at @queenofheartstheband.
Find the members’ individual music projects at @tarachugh, @thomas.jennings, @karenlaurapeters, and
@carriejenningsmusic.
