ZOON, the Anishinaabe-Canadian musician, makes music that feels like storytelling.

Today, ZOON returns with their highly anticipated third full-length album, HAPPY THOUGHT SCHOOL, out now via Paper Bag Records alongside the release of focus track, “You Can’t See Me (This Low).” Across the record, ZOON refracts heartbreak, relapse, racial trauma, and spiritual recalibration through a cosmic blend of moccasin-gaze and dream-pop shaped by memory, distortion, and tape hiss.

“You Can’t See Me (This Low)” is a dreamy, distorted reflection on the pain and isolation that can accompany personal struggle. The track encapsulates what ZOON does best: “…reorienting shoegaze… into a modern form of folk music…” (Pitchfork).

Zoon Shares, “It was about a time when I relapsed after losing a mentor and cousin, and with the pressures of the world and the Trump regime, I was feeling very low, and a partner of mine was coming over to help, but I didn’t want them to see me in that state. Eventually, we cleaned up, and I was off to get help, and a month after I wrote this very sensitive love song.“

On HAPPY THOUGHT SCHOOL, ZOON delivers their most emotionally revealing and sonically expansive work to date. The album explores heartbreak, relapse, racial trauma, and spiritual recalibration through a cosmic blend of moccasin-gaze and dream-pop, shaped by memory, distortion, and tape hiss.

The title references ZOON’s experiences attending a school in East Selkirk, Manitoba, where, despite its optimistic name, they faced racism as one of the only Native students. During that time, pop radio became a refuge—early-2000s Top 20 hits blasting through headphones while they stood alone in a field. That contrast between bright surfaces and deeper wounds runs throughout the album.

With HAPPY THOUGHT SCHOOL, ZOON synthesizes their foundations into a record that is at once diaristic and defiant, an archive of survival reframed as lo-fi pop experimentation, where memory becomes art and vulnerability becomes structure.

“You Can’t See Me (This Low)” and HAPPY THOUGHT SCHOOL are out June 19th via Paper Bag Records. 

HAPPY THOUGHT SCHOOL TRACKLISTING

1. Beautiful II
2. One Too Many Nights (feat. Sam Jr.)
3. Atactic
4. I Was Younger
5. Happy Thought School
6. OMNI II
7. Olivia’s Tears 
8. You Can’t See Me (This Low)
9. How Many More Times 
10. Used and Stapled (One Last Dance)

ZOON BIO:

On HAPPY THOUGHT SCHOOL, ZOON delivers their most emotionally forensic and compositionally expansive statement to date. Releasing June 19, 2026 via Paper Bag Records, the album refracts heartbreak, relapse, racial trauma, and spiritual recalibration through a cosmic moccasin-gaze pop, shaped by memory and tape hiss. The title references their experiences at a school in East Selkirk, Manitoba, where despite its optimistic name they endured racism as one of the only Native students. Pop radio became refuge: early-2000s Top 20 hits blasting through headphones while they stood alone in a field. That contradiction joyful surface, painful sublayer defines the record’s architecture.