Jake & Shelby - Learning to Love (2025) Hi-Res

Nashville-based singer-songwriter duo Jake & Shelby released their dreamlike debut studio album Learning To Love through EMPIRE. A showcase of earworm pop melodies, heart-warming harmonies, and shapeshifting rhythms, the 12-track LP is the perfect soundtrack for anyone who has ever found themselves tangled in love.

Love is redefined in so many ways for various entities. It’s not just one thing or idea. For indie-pop duo Jake & Shelby, love is a wide range of emotions and feelings that can both take you by surprise and break your heart in two. On their debut album, Learning To Love, they tell the story of love in all its forms — falling in love and falling out of it, as well as chasing, questioning and surrendering to it.

The new project, which followed their EP Just Us (2024), provides them with the opportunity to let their relatability take center stage under a new era. The new sound makes the opening track, “Loophole,” the perfect introduction, allowing listeners to truly hear their growth and automatically setting the precedent for their crunchy guitars, haunting piano and vocal harmony that showcases Jake’s powerful harmonic abilities blending with Shelby’s jazz-tinged vocals. The emotional desperation heard here creates space for the first unreleased track on the album, “mhm,” which explores the space in between where you feel deeply connected to another. Yet, you’re not sure if those feelings are reciprocated. about longing, love at a distance. She sings, “I wanna be wherever you are / Wherever you wanna go.” It’s a sentiment that continues to burst with flavor on “You Don’t Know.”

There’s slow intention on “A Little at a Time,” offering a sense of hope and patience that isn’t necessarily present on “mhm.” Here, Jake & Shelby describe letting love grow naturally and falling in love gradually (“One by one, two by two / A little at a time in love with you / Not too fast, not too much / Can’t get there if it’s all at once”). It’s a refreshing take on love after the hesitance and anxiety-driven emotions that often accompany it, and allows Shelby’s flowy, dreamy vocals to shine.

After circling a moment that is soft and unforgettable before finally getting to it on “Shut Up and Kiss Me,” Jake & Shelby describe the feelings that come after heartbreak or burnout on “Fragile.” An emotional ballad, the duo details what it feels like to fall apart quietly. Deeply rooted in loneliness and anxiety, and how small one can feel at the bottom, the song sees them trapped in their own fragility before simultaneously relapsing into love and all the intoxication that comes with that on “Stuck On Your Love.” “You” feels like that call after the storm — finding peace after love.

Jake & Shelby are anchored by a quiet devastation on “Our Hands” — a song that feels like the turning point on the album and the beginning of the end. It explores the gray area where you’re still tangled with someone you know you shouldn’t be. They sing, “I just don’t understand / Guess for now it’s all just tangled in our hands.” On this song, the duo is just stuck in a relationship that’s lost its balance, and despite realizing they deserve better, no one can walk away quite yet. But sometimes those emotions become so painful that they need to run away together on a song fittingly titled, “Run Run Run.” With echoing vocals and a slow-motion crescendo, the song reaches outward rather than dwelling on uncertainty. For them, escape becomes flight.