HALES Chases A Love Beyond Time And Space On New Single ‘Deja Vu’
HALES Chases A Love Beyond Time And Space On New Single ‘Deja Vu’
September 2nd, 2026
South Auckland artist HALES released ‘Deja Vu’ on Friday, August 28th.
Where most songs start with a concept, ‘Deja Vu’ started with a feeling. “The idea came naturally, either from the beat itself or from the energy in the room,” HALES says. “Once we had that initial idea locked in, it was pretty much game over from there.” The result is a love song that reaches beyond the ordinary, a connection that feels like it transcends time, space and even different lifetimes.
‘Deja Vu’ is the first of two singles leading into HALES’s six-track EP, out in October, with ‘Like You’ feat. 8RO8 set to follow in September. “This project was about returning to that pure love of music that I had when I first started,” he says. “It was about pushing myself, not only lyrically, but also musically, and reminding myself why I fell in love with creating music in the first place.”
‘Deja Vu’ is out Friday, August 28th, on all streaming platforms.
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HALES is a singer, songwriter, producer and instrumentalist from Ōtara, South Auckland. Raised on R&B artists like K-Ci & JoJo, D’Angelo and Lauryn Hill, taught guitar by his late brother, and shaped by gospel music through church out west, he found his own voice as a songwriter at Edgewater College, where influences like Twenty One Pilots, Simple Plan and The Script broadened his sound.
That range still defines him. HALES describes his music as adaptable and eclectic, unwilling to sit in one genre, though the lyrics stay drawn from his own life, real and unfiltered. It’s an approach shaped as much by Dijon, Lucky Daye and Bruno Mars as by where he grew up. That sound has already found an audience beyond Aotearoa, with songs like ‘Overthinking’ and ‘Revolve’ streamed millions of times over, and earned HALES co-signs from artists including
Teddy Swims, David Dallas, Melodownz and Jeremy Passion, with David Dallas and Melodownz becoming mentors he turns to directly.
He carries that same instinct into “Deja Vu”, a song about a love that feels almost cosmic, transcending time, space and lifetimes, and into “Like You” with 8RO8 that follows it. Both point toward HALES’s six-track EP, due in October, a project he describes simply as a return to the pure love of music that started it all.