For Immediate Release

September 8, 2023

THE HAILS RELEASE THEIR DEBUT ALBUM

WHAT’S YOUR MOTIVE – STREAM

SETTING OUT NEXT WEEK ON FIRST EVER HEADLINE TOUR –

SEE ALL DATES HERE

WATCH THE OFFICIAL VIDEOS FOR

“WHEN YOU WERE BORED” AND “BREATHLESS”

ALBUM’S SINGLES HAVE ALREADY AMASSED OVER 1.5M STREAMS

Press photo by Luke Rogers [Download]

“The Hails take the blueprint and run with it, with the keyboard line humming along and each hook landing with the utmost conviction.”

“It’s a fun ride, simultaneously feeling like a new direction for the group and an obvious next step for the Miami boys.”

“The Hails grip you not just with their irresistibly honeyed melodies — their beguiling R&B rhythms made electric by their varied genre influences — but also with their capacity for tugging the heartstrings with such precision through their songwriting.”

“The Hails find their motivation in their debut album.”

Today, The Hails release their long-awaited debut album What’s Your Motive. In ten tracks, the Florida five-piece perfectly display their penchant for well-polished experimentation and all-consuming storytelling. The LP is an orbit of grief and reconciliation over growing pains, both individual and with each other – Stream.

Building their own DIY studio in Miami a couple years back, the band curated their creative environment from installing the flooring to collecting furniture potluck style. Much of the album was written and recorded during consistent gatherings in this space, a surprising setting for the refined sonics of What’s Your Motive. Out of The Hails HQ their debut album was born, surely making enemies out of their retail neighbors.

Describing What’s Your Motive as an album born out of necessity for the band, their frontman Robbie Kingsley said, “We have very strong emotions towards each other. Sharing a common goal doesn’t mean that you always see eye to eye. There are days when we legitimately hate each other and there are other moments where we couldn’t imagine a life with anyone outside of the five of us. It’s a weird brotherhood that we’ve adopted. This is a key theme in telling the story of the record because we’ve gone over so many bumps in the road emotionally just to get here.”

What’s Your Motive is a progressively zooming out view of what happens when you break the cycle of complacency, an album with a worldview that expands as you listen further. Beginning with the opening track “Caligula,” titled after the famously cruel Roman emperor, the enemy at hand is introduced – you. Naming himself Caligula by the end of the song, Kingsley sets up the question of why am I killing myself and still not happy? He notes, “It’s weird how you can almost work against yourself in a way that actually progresses you forward.”

Moving into the next few tracks, the focus grows outward from the self into examining romantic relationships. Bleeding yourself dry to hold onto a sense of familiarity isn’t enough to keep things together. A major tone shift in the album takes place at the halfway point with “They Seem Wrong.” Sonically stripped down, especially in comparison to stickiness of previous track “When You Were Bored,” “They Seem Wrong” is an open wound of a song, a scab you can’t stop picking at. This crossroads in the album also marks a content shift from romantic relationships to friendships. Tenderly, the band documents the permanent misalignment you can feel when you don’t grow alongside people you once knew.

“It’s sad to think about, but you do outgrow people and they outgrow you too,” Kingsley laments.

The next portion of the album sees hints of personal progress, but the unseen leash of waiting for permission keeps yanking things back. Shedding more and more of what no longer serves the protagonist, this freeing lightness is reflected in the energy of this grouping of songs until we hit “Time Never Sat So Still.” A song that asks what you do after you’ve realized the things you’ve outgrown, this is the album’s eye of the storm; the calmness in calamity. All this leads to the album closer “In Moments.” Cinematic, sultry, and sonically massive, the album’s resolution is a point of clarity. Fleeting things can still be precious because you are the sum of all your parts, even the ones you give up over time. 

What’s Your Motive album artwork and track list [Download]

In celebration of their debut album, The Hails will be hitting the road for their first ever headline tour, with the first leg of the tour starting next week. Throughout the month of September, they will hit key East Coast and Midwest markets with support from Cannibal Kids and Shallow Alcove. The tour run will see The Hails make a long-awaited return to Gainesville, Florida’s infamous High Dive – one of the venues they credit with the early formation the band. Then in February 2024, the tour’s second leg will wind the band over to the West Coast and back, with support from Foxtide and more to be announced. See all tour info here and below.

UPCOMING HEADLINE TOUR DATES

2023

September 14 - Washington, DC - DC9*

September 15 - Philadelphia, PA - Kung Fu Necktie*

September 16 - New York, NY - Mercury Lounge*

September 17 - Boston, MA - Middle East (Upstairs)*

September 19 - Cleveland, OH - Foundry*

September 20 - Chicago, IL - Beat Kitchen*

September 22 - Nashville, TN - The End*

September 23 - Atlanta, GA - The Vinyl#

September 27 - Orlando, FL - Will’s Pub#

September 28 - Gainesville, FL - High Dive#

September 29 - Tampa, FL - Crowbar#

September 30 - Miami, FL - The Ground#

2024

February 1 - Houston, TX - White Oak Music Hall ^

February 2 - Dallas, TX - Club Dada ^

February 3 - Austin, TX - Mohawk (Inside) ^

February 7 - Phoenix, AZ - Valley Bar ^

February 8 - San Diego, CA - Voodoo Room at House of Blues ^

February 9 - Los Angeles, CA - Moroccan Lounge ^

February 11 - San Francisco, CA - Brick and Mortar ^

February 13 - Portland, OR - Mission Theater ^

February 14 - Seattle, WA - Barboza ^

February 16 - Salt Lake City, UT - Kilby Court ^

February 17 - Denver, CO - Lost Lake ^

February 20 - Minneapolis, MN - 7th Street Entry

February 21- Milwaukee, WI - Cactus Club

February 23 - Indianapolis, IN - Hi Fi

February 24 - Columbus, OH - The Basement

February 27 - Carrboro, NC - Cat’s Cradle Back Room

* with support from Shallow Alcove

# with support from Cannibal Kids

^ with support from Foxtide

All tour info here



Earlier this year, The Hails spent time on the road supporting The Happy Fits, The Beaches and the moss, all while interspersing their own headline dates and rolling out singles from their album. Their singles leading up to their LP earned over 1.5 million streams, major national attention from the likes of Billboard and Consequence, as well as regional praise from every market they’ve stepped foot in. Winning over new listeners through the airwaves and from the stage, The Hails have primed themselves for a momentous unleashing of What’s Your Motive, available everywhere now. 

Press photo by Luke Rogers [Download]

ABOUT THE HAILS

Regardless of whichever omnipresent puller-of-strings you subscribe to, it’s undeniable that some force was always working to ensure the inevitability of The Hails. From two of the band members both calling the same third floor apartment home at different parts of their then separate childhoods — the very building they’d later meet their bassist in — to a fateful University of Florida dining hall encounter years later that set things in motion. There has always been a strange air about the sequence of events meant to unite Robbie Kingsley, Franco Solari, Dylan McCue, Andre Escobar and Zach Levy, that begs the question, is anything ever truly up to chance?

Despite first playing in an insular Miami high school music scene, the band officially formed at UF, finding their moniker in the college’s alma mater — “All hail, Florida, hail.” The Hails banded together through a slew of long nights and wild house shows in their living room — the only option in the basement-less state of Florida. Ironically, from the tattered carpeting and the beer bottle lined shelves of their shitty college house arose a distinct, refined sound that is now synonymous with the band’s name. 

With shimmering early singles like “Younger” and “Stay,” and their EPs He Seems Upset (2020) and Alive in Strange Ways (2021), The Hails came to represent an edgy sort of sleekness that can only be attributed to the cities they cut their teeth in — Gainesville and Miami. Mirrored in the band’s sound, there’s an underlying grit that comes from Gainesville’s affinity toward DIY; where the band played countless shows at the infamous High Dive over the years and hijacked the community spirit of an entire college town. But within everything the band does, you can hear Miami’s quality of perfectly riding the line between the cutting edge and the neon-laced nostalgia of yesteryears. Fusing their varying cultures, upbringings and influences, comes a sound that's unmistakably singular.

Firing the starting pistol of their current chapter, The Hails began rolling out singles from their debut album in October 2022. Recent highlights of the road include holding court at festivals like III Points, WonderStruck and Okeechobee, interspersed between sold-out shows across the state of Florida, and tour support for WILLIS, The Happy Fits, The Beaches and the moss. Now with their debut album What’s Your Motive out in the world, The Hails will bring their new music to the road on their first ever headline tour.

The keys to that third-floor apartment have traded hands to another family, and a new wave of orange-and-blue-clad underclassmen shuffle into the dining hall to grab their heat-lamp-warmed meals. But even in the same settings, no string of occurrences will ever happen again to create a band quite like The Hails.

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For The Hails press materials and inquiries, please contact:

Madi Florence / madi@bighassle.com