Inside Deau Eyes' Richmond home studio, unfinished songs share space with sketches, instruments, and a whiteboard crowded with ideas. Nothing in the room looks settled, which makes it an apt birthplace for "To Grow Instead," arriving November 13, 2026. Across the album, Ali Thibodeau turns years of creative uncertainty and personal change into something more deliberate: a record about choosing growth when staying the same would have been easier.

Years of change shape the record

Thibodeau has described To Grow Instead as a documentary time capsule covering roughly four to eight years of her life. She said every song led her toward another phase, giving the project a structure built around movement rather than one isolated period.

That perspective keeps the record's focus personal. Its subject is not every event that occurred during those years, but the way experience altered her creative decisions. Life influenced the music, she explained, and the album became a place where those changes could be examined.

Growth appears not as a completed achievement, but as a response to uncertainty. By documenting movement from one phase toward another, Thibodeau turns change into creative material and gives the forthcoming album a consistent emotional center throughout its journey.

Revision turns uncertainty into progress

Co-produced with Ryan Gary, To Grow Instead  was developed through experimentation with sound and arrangement. Thibodeau said she could sometimes see a song's visual identity before she could hear its final form. That distance between imagination and execution created frustration, but it also required her to keep searching rather than accepting an unsatisfying version until the feeling matched what she imagined.

The work could be demanding. She recalled spending days recording versions that she eventually discarded because the songs felt vulnerable and precious. Scrapping completed work did not signal failure. Within the album's growth narrative, beginning again became evidence that she valued emotional honesty over the convenience of keeping material simply because it was finished for the sake of the completed record.

"Woman of My Word," released June 26, provides the first public example of that approach. Thibodeau connected the song to double standards affecting women in music and to the cost of choosing oneself. Its directness reinforces the album's central concern, allowing this new indie release to introduce growth through a single carefully shaped act of self-definition for listeners awaiting it.

Growth remains the album's center

Every discarded version and unfinished idea has carried Deau Eyes closer to the sound she was seeking. Rather than hiding uncertainty, To Grow Instead  places that uncertainty at the center of its meaning, showing how patience and revision can transform doubt into creative direction.

When the album arrives, it will not present growth as a finished achievement. It will reflect the quieter work of listening, changing, and beginning again when necessary. Through that process, Thibodeau offers a hopeful conclusion: progress does not require having all the answers. Sometimes, it begins with the courage to keep moving toward what feels honest.