We Want WAAN

Dutch duo WAAN return with their sophomore album We Want WAAN, a genre-defying exploration of rhythm, improvisation, and emotion — out January 23, 2026 on Sonar Kollektiv.

Following the critical acclaim of their 2023 debut Echo Echo— which earned two Edison Award nominations and strong support from press and radio (including BBC Radio 2’s Jamie Cullum) — saxophonist Bart Wirtz and keyboardist Emiel van Rijthoven push their musical conversation further on We Want WAAN. What emerges is a deeply textured, cinematic album that fuses jazz, electronics, and beat culture with raw emotional clarity.

The album’s creative spark was ignited on the remote Dutch island of Texel, where the pair retreated in summer 2024 to write freely — unburdened by format, genre, or expectation. “Whatever the track needs, we give it,” WAAN explains. That simple principle opened the door to sweeping strings, broken time signatures, crowd recordings, and boundary-pushing collaborations.

A key moment arrives with “Been Blue,” a striking fusion of jazz and hip-hop featuring Philadelphia rapper, singer, and producer Ivy Sole — a powerful voice in the global non-binary music movement. Known for their poetic lyricism and emotional nuance, Sole brings a defiant vulnerability to the track, touching on grief, identity, and resistance. The result is one of the album’s most affecting and genre-transcending moments.

From the meditative opening of “We Want WAAN” to the rhythm-forward intensity of “Mirrors” and “Lodge Texas”, the album balances intricacy with soul. Tracks like “Talking Trees” and “In Doubt” drift into melancholic trip-hop, while “Moto No Oto” and “In Dreams” lean into ambient jazz textures.

The album was produced in collaboration with Oscar de Jong (Kraak & Smaak), it reflects the tension and beauty of WAAN’s musical identity: one foot in the jazz tradition, the other deep in a future-facing, improvisational sound world.

A1 We Want Waan
A2 Talking Trees
A3 Mirrors
A4 Why Didn’t You Get Me
A5 In Dirt
B1 Moto No Oto
B2 In Doubt
B3 Been Blue feat. Ivy Sole
B4 In Dreams
B5 Lodge Texas
B6 Cecilyum