Indie-folk singer-songwriter Ali Whitton has today released ‘Hopeful Heart’ - a powerful follow-up to November’s track ‘Quiet My Heart’ ahead of his debut album Between the Forest and the Stars due to release in April 2026.
Ali Whitton’s songwriting journey has taken him from rural North Yorkshire to the stages of London, Paris and Aotearoa - shaped by heartbreak, reinvention, and a lifelong connection to storytelling. Inspired early on by discovering his father’s poetry, Ali learned that songwriting could be a way to process life’s most emotional moments.
After fronting bands and performing solo across Europe, Ali relocated to New Zealand in 2010, where he began releasing music under the name Lost Bird and became a fixture on the local acoustic circuit. A longtime friendship with Ed Sheeranled to a pivotal moment in 2023, when Ali shared a work-in-progress track that sparked a year-long songwriting and recording commitment.
That collaboration has since evolved into Ali’s debut album, co-produced by Dave Khan (Marlon Williams, The Veils, Reb Fountain) and Reb Fountain featuring musicians Gus Agars and Steve Harrop - marking an exciting new chapter in his career.
Today’s release of ‘Hopeful Heart’ gives audiences another sneak peek into what to expect from April’s album release. Lyrically, ‘Hopeful Heart’ is a cynical lament to the optimism and the ‘keeping-on-trying’ mentality of a dreamer, whose heart is always hoping for some big true love and sees only ‘the possible’, and the good in the world, only to be so-often let down. “It really shows the unkindness of our inner voices sometimes, how we are all constantly wrestling with the balance between our hopes and our setbacks.”
Ali’s full body of work encapsulates the spiritof a traveller, moving through the world. In ‘Hopeful Heart’ Ali found himself in the thick of his challenge of writing a song a week for a year. “In between solo parenting and the day job, I had hardly any time to write the song for the week I was in, so the opening line ‘hopeful heart, another song’ was almost expressing exasperation towards the challenge. It ended up being written really quickly and being about the dreamer inside of me that just wants to do music and experience all the beauty in the world versus the reality of the day job, the grind, and the aches of life.”
Today’s single and Ali’s debut album Between the Forest and the Stars showcases a sound that is woody and warm, rich and layered, with Ali’s voice always at the centre, vulnerable yet true. There is comfort in this music, as well as a deep sense of longing.