Former One Dove singer Dot Allison is back with Heart-Shaped Scars, her first solo album in 12 years, which will be out July 30 via SA Recordings. She co-produced the album with Fiona Cruickshank (who’s worked with Hans Zimmer and Clint Mansell) and Hannah Peel did string arrangements on four songs. The record is also colored with field recordings of birds, brooks, and other sounds from the Hebrides, the Scottish archipelago where Dot has a cottage. “I wanted it to be comforting like a familiar in-utero heartbeat,” says Alison, “a pure kind of album that musically imbues a return to nature.”

The first single from the record is the gorgeous, pastoral “Long Exposure,” which Allison says was one of the first songs she ever wrote on ukulele. “Last March I picked up the instrument and started composing, the fact I don’t play the ukulele was very freeing and I had to compose purely by ear, constructing my own chord clusters.” You can listen to that below.

Heart-Shaped Scars tracklist:
1. Long Exposure
2. The Haunted
3. Constellations
4. Can You Hear Nature Sing?
5. Ghost Orchid
6. Entanglement
7. Forever’s Not Much Time
8. Cue The Tears
9. One Love
10. Love Died In Our Arms
11. Goodbye