San Fer­nan­do-born Chris­t­ian-Folk, singer/song­writer Can­dace Cok­er has sur­prised her lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al fans with a Valen­tine’s Day re­lease of her lat­est sin­gle, He­m­or­rhage.

This re­lease pre­cedes her full-length stu­dio al­bum, Bare and Bones, which is sched­uled for a dig­i­tal re­lease on the artist’s birth­day to­day on all pop­u­lar stream­ing chan­nels. Cok­er has been song­writ­ing since the age of 10 be­fore be­gin­ning her pro­fes­sion­al ca­reer in 2018 af­ter win­ning the An­za Live Com­mu­ni­ty Show­case in Van­cou­ver, Cana­da.

Since then, Cok­er has re­leased nine sin­gles and per­formed at many venues in Cana­da. She has col­lab­o­rat­ed with award-win­ning Cana­di­an com­pos­er Daryl Ben­nett on works for TV and film, in­clud­ing co-writ­ing and per­form­ing What is Man for the Bisp­ing Doc­u­men­tary; Go, the ti­tle track for the I Am Paul Walk­er Doc­u­men­tary; and sev­er­al oth­er Cana­di­an Broad­cast­ing Cor­po­ra­tion (CBC) projects and short films.

She has al­so con­tributed as a vo­cal­ist on Episodes 1 and 2 of the CW Se­ries, The Mur­ders and was a fi­nal­ist in the Folk Singer/Song­writer cat­e­go­ry of the 2020 In­ter­na­tion­al Song­writ­ing Com­pe­ti­tion.

She was al­so part of the all-fe­male show­case Fem­core 2022 Tour in Trinidad. Over the last five years, Cok­er has built a large au­di­ence with over 20,000 lis­ten­ers on Spo­ti­fy.

Cok­er’s 10-track stu­dio al­bum, Bare Bones, ex­plores the beau­ty and wrestling in­volved in be­ing a vul­ner­a­ble (bare) hu­man (bones). This 10-track stu­dio al­bum is a col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween Cok­er and Nashville-based pro­duc­er and artist, Lori Chaf­fer.

The al­bum record­ing be­gan in May 2021 and was com­plet­ed on Ju­ly 22, 2022, with all of the vo­cals and some in­stru­men­ta­tion be­ing record­ed by the artist at her home in San Fer­nan­do. These record­ings were then sent to her Nashville pro­duc­er who built ad­di­tion­al in­stru­men­ta­tion around it.

The al­bum fea­tures lo­cal pi­anist Kirsten Gib­son and Amer­i­can vi­o­lin­ist Al­isa Bieck, with al­bum pho­tog­ra­phy be­ing done by lo­cal pho­tog­ra­ph­er Tegwen Ivy Ra­j­nauth.

Since com­ple­tion, Cok­er has re­leased five songs off of the full al­bum, cap­ti­vat­ing Spo­ti­fy lis­ten­ers in over 130 coun­tries. She has al­so since been signed to an In­de­pen­dent La­bel, Old Bear Records, who now pro­vides her with sup­port for the dig­i­tal dis­tri­b­u­tion of her al­bum. When asked about her Valen­tine’s Day re­lease, Cok­er said: “He­m­or­rhage is one of my favourites off of the record. It is a sweet and vul­ner­a­ble re­flec­tion on the jour­ney of a lov­ing re­la­tion­ship through time. We’re all such flawed hu­mans and some­times love can feel re­al­ly chal­leng­ing and messy. I wrote this song orig­i­nal­ly in 2015 while pro­cess­ing some of my own fears of love and mar­riage with God.

“I wrote this as an act of faith al­most, as an ode to my fu­ture per­son and a promise that I’m will­ing to push through the fears and pow­er strug­gles that of­ten mark ear­ly re­la­tion­ships be­cause I have hope for what could be on the oth­er side of that per­se­ver­ance: in­ti­ma­cy, syn­er­gy, ac­cep­tance and love that lasts.

“I re­al­ly want­ed to sur­prise fans with this one be­cause any­time I’ve per­formed this song live, it’s be­come an in­stant fan-favourite. Son­i­cal­ly, this song re­minds me of the mu­sic I’ve grown up lis­ten­ing to on 97.1. I hope this Valen­tine’s Day re­lease be­comes a favourite for any­one who hears it.”

Lis­ten­ers are en­cour­aged to en­joy the re­lease on their favourite stream­ing plat­form, in­clud­ing Spo­ti­fy, Ap­ple Mu­sic or YouTube.

Cok­er’s full al­bum will be re­leased world­wide to­day (Feb­ru­ary 17, 2023)