Thematically, the band's fourth album was inspired naturally by social and political issues. After a long run writing music solely for other artists including Carly Rae Jepsen and James Walsh of Starsailor, Gray is excited to work with his own bandmates again:

Come Back to Life, dives deeper than it's preceding releases, touching on everything from Canada’s appalling treatment of its First Nations (“Wreck Beach/Totem Park”), to artists being priced out of the cities they’ve helped make great (“Bombs Away”), to Gray at his most potently poignant on “PrEP” – which came out of a reddit thread asking users to share their first-hand accounts of the ’80s AIDS epidemic.

“My dad [playwright John MacLachlan Gray] was in theatre, so in lots of baby photos I’m being held by friends of his I don’t recognize,” Gray reminisces. “One day I asked him about them, and it turns out every one of them are gone. They were probably gone within five years of the pictures being taken. Now by some miracle HIV is totally manageable and it pisses me off that we’re not all out there celebrating the light at the end of such a long, dark tunnel.”

The album's latest single "I Feel the Transition" was fueled by the current state of affairs in North America and beyond. Lead singer Zach Gray reflects:

With Come Back To Life, The Zolas aim to encapsulate feelings on conscious topics, and focus on the importance of music and art during turbulent times.

Q: Tell us about your latest single "I Feel the Transition":

This was a song that kind of cracked things open for us. We'd been obsessed with the early 90s Manchester baggy scene and it started off like many of our tunes do as a ripoff of a song we love – in this case the Happy Mondays. The words "I Feel the Transition" came to me right away and were underscored by all the young activists making headlines that week, the rest of the song wrote itself. It made me think of a new generation coming up and being thoroughly unimpressed by the world being left to them. This song is driving through the most desperate neighborhoods with empty highrises glittering overhead. It's getting an arts degree and then discovering how little that's valued. It's hearing scientists say we have 7 years to figure this out and then watching politicians talk 30-year plans. It was basically inspired by all the conversations we have with our friends about the state of the world and what we can do about it. But feeling-wise I wanted to capture the swagger you feel when you know you're fighting for the right thing. I really think this period will be thought of the way they look back at the late 60s and as anxiety-inducing as it is to be living through it, we should try to appreciate the moment.

Q: What drove you to switch gears from prominently writing for others to returning to The Zolas to put out a project?

I still write for other people. Sometimes I write a pop song that I can't pull off myself and it goes into a side-pile to give to other artists. I have a bunch in a drive right now, so if you're an interesting artist reading this and you want to collab call me.

Q: Your music has touched on many serious subjects – from the treatment of First Nations people to the Aids epidemic to the current political state, how important is it to use your platform to encourage cognisance and conversation?

I don't set out to write songs about difficult subjects. I just write songs about whatever moves me in the moment, whatever makes me well up. I want to capture that feeling in a little capsule. Like imagine you could take a pill and instantly feel everything I felt when I watched a documentary or read an article or heard a story? I want to make those pills. And like a lot of people lately, I've been realizing that there are loads of stories that never get told in mainstream art because they're not easily digestible and those are the pills I like making best. Not sure if that's the tidiest metaphor but let's try it on.

Q: What can we expect from your forthcoming new album Come Back to Life?

What I've been boasting to people since before we even started writing for it is that our next record will feel like the spiritual heir to the Romeo + Juliet and Trainspotting soundtracks. We're already there but we're still adding to it so we'll see when it's all wrapped.

Q: Are there any other political or social messages on the record that you’re hoping to convey to your listeners?

Haha no no, I don't have a checklist or anything. Lots of important issues I care about will do just fine without a song from me. One goal I'm always chipping away at, is to write about climate change in a way that lays bare how simple it is and what we have to do about it. It's one of those rare times when the radical solution is the only practical solution and it's centrists who are the naïve ones. It's really black and white. In my fantasies I'm Naomi Klein's musical attaché.

Q: Any advice/words of optimism for others during the pandemic?

Nah. I've been brutally unproductive. Super disappointed in myself, tbh. I'm dramatically up and down. Maybe that's the optimism: we're all going through the exact same thing.

Q: What’s next for The Zolas?

Last night we got together and discussed a plan to set up a proper Zolas HQ where we can officially put an end to the arcane silliness of doing albums every 3 years. Apologies to all you loyal swooners for how long it's been between releases and let me say that if you're with us, we're gonna set it so we can be creative year round and the machine or organ or whatever you want to call it is always pumping.

Q: What inspired you to tackle the music world while simultaneously being one of Canada’s most successful Youtubers?

I’ve always been super passionate about music, playing piano for 16 years and joining the school choir etc., but I was always too shy to release original music until recently. Songwriting is one of the only ways I feel comfortable expressing my thoughts and emotions, and I also find the process of creating a song so fun. Releasing original music was a way for me to step outside of my comfort zone to share with the world something that I’ve been wanting to do for a long time.

Q: Tell us about your single “Falling To Your Knees”:

A couple months ago, when the pandemic was picking up, I started getting some racist comments on my videos, and I wrote this song in response. Even though I wrote this song out of frustration in that certain moment, I see it as a culmination of the years of thoughts I’ve wanted to express and me finally standing up for myself, taking back the control. The process of making the song was very DIY and low budget. I made a demo track on GarageBand and recorded the vocals in my bedroom with pillow and blankets to absorb the echo in the room. Because of quarantine, I sent off the track to get produced remotely. The whole process was really interesting and super fun.

Q: What can you tell us about your music video for the track?

One of my favourite films of all time is “Ex Machina,” and I really felt inspired by this movie for the music video. Essentially I’m portraying a robot whose every thought and action is being controlled by a man who is the evil genius creator. He tells me what to wear, how to eat, and how to act, and at first I go along because I don’t know any better, but as I start to “malfunction” in his eyes, he builds himself a new robot who will follow his directions. It’s then that I realize I’m a robot and that I’ve never had any true control over my thoughts or actions, and I plot to overthrow him and break free. I wanted the video to reflect the feelings of being controlled by societal expectations for women and people of colour and how I’m learning to break free of those shackles and take back control of my life.

Q: How important is it to embrace your heritage and create representation for people possibly facing the same discrimination that you did/do?

I think representation of all types of people in the media is so important in order to accurately reflect what society looks like in real life. Nobody deserves to feel othered or like they don’t belong because they don’t fit the norm. Growing up I’ve always felt the pressures of societal standards for what a girl should look like and act, as well as the struggles of fitting in as an Asian Canadian. There were always parts of myself that I would be scared to express or embrace because I would be made fun of for my culture, food, and features. But over the years, it gets tiring trying to hide parts of yourself, and so it feels good to finally start embracing everything that makes me who I am.

Q: What advice can you give to others who face racism and hate speech?

It’s not a reflection of you, but a reflection of the hate in those people’s hearts and inability to accept anything that is different.

Q: What is the secret behind building a dedicated fan base?

Being authentic and being yourself. I know it’s so cliche, but I think it’s so important for people to see that you’re a real human being with real thoughts and feelings because it gives them a way to connect to you.

Q: What’s getting you through these times?

A lot of facetime calls with my friends and Among Us game sessions.

Q: What’s next for JEN Z?

I’m always writing and recording new music, so hopefully that will see the light of day very soon! I’m really excited for people to hear what I have coming, but for now, stay tuned.

After disappearing from the music scene entirely, Baby FuzZ reemerged with a wonderfully-weird fusion of audiovisual glam rock and normcore. The extravagantly eclectic artist independently released his debut album Plastic Paradise in 2019 as "a death rattle of a previous life of overthought pop demos that had finally eaten itself alive with a sense of ennui"

Now front and centre, Baby FuzZ brings to life a cartoon-like alter ego whose music has been described as a blend of indie rock, glam pop, and soul-crushing ballads with a live show that's one part performance art, one part rock and roll rave and wholly extraordinary.

His latest venture comes in the form of a single and music video for "Acid Night." This trippy tale is the fourth song from his forthcoming sophomore album Welcome To The Future. Fox scribbled down lyrics while on an acid trip at a Dodgers baseball game – which turned into a song reflective of his dark vision of America.

Shot in the desert in the midst of the pandemic – with a very small crew, the visuals for "Acid Night" explore the story of a traveler from the future, searching for clues in a post-apocalyptic world.

This dystopian vibe extends throughout Baby FuzZ's upcoming double album release, with him writing at times from the point of view of an orca, suburbanites named Kevin and Karen, and a cellphone.

Along with an emphasis on environmentalism, Baby FuzZ uses his artistry to encourage people to think consciously about political and social issues with heavy doses of conservationism, disguised symbolism and good old fashioned American absurdity.

With genre-jumping music and brilliantly bizarre verses, Baby FuzZ oozes bold, brainy, animated and enigmatic artistry with every endeavour.

You’ve wrote for many notable artists from Britney Spears to Lana Del Ray as Sterling Fox. What drove you to birth Baby FuzZ?

I was working for years writing songs and producing for other artists, like you said, gradually as a musician, the longer you do something, the more you kind of build your skillset. When I started in music, I was just a session player – I was playing piano on people’s songs and stuff like that. Eventually I worked my way up to fully writing songs and producing songs for other people, I think the next step on my journey was just kind of doing everything – where I’m singing on songs and I’ll put them out myself. I’m just to that point now that I am my own record label, I’m writing my own songs, I’m putting them out myself and producing them. Basically, it incorporates everything I’ve learned through the years and it gives me a chance to apply it to my own stuff. It was also getting to the point where I was writing songs for people and they would record them – and when I listened back to them, they were starting to sound like cover songs to me or the versions they were doing didn’t really inhabit the lyrics in the way that I wanted them to. I guess they were getting too personal – the songs, and they felt too specific to give to other people. I felt they would be more effective if I put them out myself as a way of communicating something real that I was feeling as opposed to giving them to somebody else. It’s kind of a complicated answer, it’s more about honesty, I guess. At the end of the day, I want to convey things directly and honestly to people instead of giving them to somebody else to try to imitate what I was feeling.

Who is Baby FuzZ? How would you describe this entity to listeners?

Baby Fuzz is kind of a complicated thing but on the surface, it’s kind of a childlike character. It’s kind of this adult who is kind of old and is re-enacting childhood. If you see a live show, it’s like a sad imitation of a musician. It’s a vibe where it’s like performance art almost, but the overarching theme to Baby FuzZ is this hyper-colourful and really happy character who is talking about and singing about dark stuff. There’s kind of a disconnect between the visual and the subject matter for the song.

You moved to Montreal immediately after the 2016 election. What influenced you to come to Canada?

It was a combination of Trump getting elected and the climate in the United States at the time was feeling really weird, just in terms of the way people were interacting with each other and the energy was just super negative and super dark. I was like; I need a reset, I need to get out of this, just for my own mental health. I went up to Montreal for a year and that was great. It was a nice personal refresh on the way I was viewing the world. It was good, I dipped into a different sea and a different music culture there. Montreal’s a great city, there’s a really vibrant music culture – both English and French. It was a nice experience for me, it helped me recalibrate personally and recharge and that kind of led to Baby FuzZ. I was up there for about a year and have been in the States since then but I definitely want to get back up there. It’s kind of where the project started to take shape initially.

Tell us about your new single and music video for "Acid Night":

Acid Night, I wrote last summer. I wrote it while I was on an acid trip at a baseball game in Los Angeles. It was the first time I ever took acid – I don’t know why, and decided to go to a baseball game, which was kind of stupid. It was a really weird experience with security and I guess the theme of the trip was itself this dark vision of America in a Hunter S. Thompson kind of way. Before the end of the trip, I started scribbling a bunch of lyrics down which eventually became the song “Acid Night.” Basically, the idea of that was not necessarily about acid or doing drugs, but it’s about feeling this sense of unease or impending doom in a situation or scenario. It ends up being kind of prophetic for 2020 because it’s kind of what ended up happening this year. It was just this kind of dark weirdness going on – kind of trippy. Life’s trippy right now, basically. The music video, we did in May during quarantine was like a skeleton crew – it was me, and 2-3 other people. We shot it out in the desert just to be away from people and it’s kind of this post-apocalyptic music video about this traveler from the future who’s searching for clues. You’ll have to watch it – it’s open to interpretation but it’s pretty interesting.

What can we expect from your forthcoming album?

The next album is a double album which means there’s two different sections to it – Part One and Part Two. Part One is coming out in the next two months. It’s basically a theme album – not a concept album, but the songs are connected thematically. I guess it’s like an environmentalist album. A lot of the themes on the songs are talking about either time in the past or the future or realizing the present is dystopian and it’s kind of encouraging people to think of how they interact with the world and how it affects people in the future. Each song’s a bit different, I hate to be didactic about it but the album is definitely an environmentalist concept album.

Are there any other political or social themes on the record?

Almost all of them. There will be a lyric or two – it’s not like the whole song is about one thing but I mean I’ll drop in lyrics. For “Acid Night” there’s a lyric about Elon Musk and the KKK, so I just sprinkle stuff in that amuses me and I don’t like to be super direct with what I’m saying to people. I’m not like “Fuck Trump” or whatever but I think that people that listen to my stuff kind of get what I’m trying to say more often than not. I try to do it in creative ways and come at issues – not in a way that’s preaching at people or telling them what think. They’re more of a way for me to get them to think about issues creatively and look at them from different angles.

What's getting you through the pandemic?

It’s been really tough. I have been just working on the album by myself a lot this year. So, it’s been a lot of alone time. I travel a little bit and that helps me refresh – going from place to place. I play a lot of video games – if I’m honest with myself. On a day to day basis, it makes me feel like I’m connected with people. I’m definitely a gamer – I’ll play some Fortnite or League of Legends and that’s kind of my social media for the day where I’m feeling like “okay, I’m connecting with people!” It’s tough times, I think the hardest thing is there’s this evolutionary thing where we want to connect with people and it’s so hard to right now because of the lockdown and the fact that the political climate is messed up. It’s hard to connect with people because you feel like there’s this divide based on their ideologies and that’s one thing in the States that’s really hard to overcome because it feels like half the population, you can’t connect with and that’s really messed up. There’s a lot of weird stuff going on right now and I’ll just be happy when this year is over. Maybe next year will bring some changes. I do think that I would love to connect with people more – that’s on my list of things. I did a big tour last year and that was really nice because it gave me the opportunity to meet tons of new people in different cities and it was awesome. It was a life-affirming thing to do. If you’re a musician and you haven’t done it before –it might not be the most amazing thing for your career but on a personal level, it’s definitely amazing to be able to meet tons of new people and connect with them through your music.

Is there anything else you would like to add?

You can check out my music wherever you listen to music. There’s a new music video out for “Acid Night” on YouTube and just keep in touch! I’m super accessible – people are always emailing me and dropping me DMs and I will always respond to whatever questions or anything really.

Treacy's musical journey came full circle on CTV's The Launch in 2019 – working with legendary guest producer Nile Rodgers and songwriter Hillary Lindsey (both of whom have worked with Gaga), to craft an original track. Treacy penned and performed "Emotional" – the season two finale's winning song that made waves on streaming platforms and radio stations across the country. Following her reality show appearance, she has been featured on numerous television programs, magazines and online publications – building a dedicated fanbase.

With her newest single "Time Off From A Letdown," Treacy digs deep once again:

In the years since sharing the stage with her idol as a teenager, Treacy has grown and developed her unapologetic artistry and is destined to manifest even more success. While she continues to bloom and flourish as a fearless, budding artist, Michelle looks forward to sharing a Christmas song and more tunes in the near future.

Q: How would you describe your sound? Who are your musical influences?

Although pop has influenced my past music, my brand new track is shoegaze rock. This new direction represents a new beginning for me, creating what I want without limitations. I’ve always been inspired by the greats. Stevie Nicks, Alanis Morissette, Joni Mitchell, Amy Winehouse to name a few. I’d say my musical influences for this new music is Coldplay meets Lana Del Rey.

Q: Tell us about your new single "Time Off From A Letdown":

Thematically, the song represents the feeling of letting everyone down; however, the reality being that you are only letting yourself down by putting others first. It is about refocusing on yourself, as I have spent the last couple of years doing just that after going through such a dark time in my life. The cinematic video is a beautiful representation of this created by an all-female team. It is a piece of art in it's purest form, and I hope you take something from it.

Q: You won Season 2 of The Launch. What’s the secret to crafting a great record?

I won the last ever episode of The Launch. It was an amazing experience and really taught me that I should always be unapologetically myself. There is no secret to crafting a record. The process is different every single time. Also, what is perfect anyway?

Q: You first made waves when you sang with Lady Gaga on stage at her concert back in 2014. How have you evolved as an artist since that very moment?

I sang with Lady Gaga when I was 17, I was still a baby. I had never had a record deal or released a song. That moment changed everything for me. Since then, I’ve grown up and I’ve had my ups and downs. It’s amazing to look back and see how far I’ve come. I’ve done a lot of work on myself since then and I feel really happy about who I am today. I’m grateful for Gaga, for my fans and for everyone who has supported my crazy life.

Q: You say you’re a "leader of the dreamers, the rebels and inbetweeners." What inspires your undeniable passion and drive for music?

I love supporting the underdogs, I think the underdogs are the true life winners and everyone should take a page from their book. I’m so inspired by life. I am inspired by conversation. There’s nothing I’d rather do then play and write music. It’s in my soul and I feel like I need to be that person for the underdogs who talks about the real stuff. Too many people today sugar coat stuff and don’t open up and say “I’m a real person and I have my issues” they want you to believe they’re on top of the world. Imagine if your favourite artists opened up more and talked about real stuff and were approachable? That would be so cool. I wanna be that.

Q: What is getting you through these times?

Eating good food and listening to good music.

Q: What’s next for Michelle Treacy?

Where ever the wind blows! Haha imagine. Pretty much that. I’ll be putting out a Christmas song next so keep your ears out. It will be another good song to cry to.