Léanie Kaleido comes from a musical family — her father is Yardbirds guitarist Top Topham — and has been writing and recording piano-based orch pop for some time now. She’s set to release her new album, How to Weigh a Whale Without a Scale, this Friday which was produced by Ride‘s Mark Gardener at the band’s OX4 studio.

While Léanie grew up “snogging posters of Ride and wanting to be PJ Harvey,” she doesn’t imitate her heroes and lets her songs be the way they are. “Not especially cool”, she says, “but I’m really proud of some of my lyrics. Getting ‘salient verities’ into a song gave me a lot of satisfaction!”

Piano and Léanie’s clear, strong voice are the primary instruments on How to Weigh a Whale Without a Scale, which stays nicely understated throughout, but you can hear just a little dreampop drift in, via heavenly harmonies and the occasional lush synth part. “This album was recorded during very strange times but in fact, those in-between lockdown studio sessions turned out to be a godsend,” Léanie tells us. “Working with Mark, who understood exactly what my tracks needed, gave me the confidence to focus on my vocals and lyrics, and not to throw the kitchen sink at every song. He’s an amazing producer and his attention to capturing the ambient sound in the room as well as the instruments is something that sets him apart from anyone else I’ve worked with.”

We’re premiering a stream of the whole album and you can listen to that below.