The name HAYLA has been on records you’ve heard without necessarily knowing it — “Escape” with Kx5, “Where You Are” with John Summit, collaborations with Kygo, Meduza, Sub Focus, and Wilkinson. The voice that closed Coachella 2024 alongside John Summit. What The Dark Tour signals is a different proposition entirely: HAYLA stepping out from the featuring credit and into the headline slot, with music she describes as emotionally heavier than anything she’s done before. The Emo’s Austin date on Saturday, August 22 lands in the middle of a 17-date North American run that has her choosing mid-tier club rooms deliberately — and that choice says something about where she is right now.
About Hayla
The Liverpool vocalist has spent the better part of four years as one of the most in-demand voices in global dance music — the kind of artist whose name appears under “feat.” on records that rack up streaming numbers most artists never see. Her debut album DUSK, released in late 2024, introduced a different version of that voice: singles like “Fall Again,” “Embers,” and “Free Fall” pushed toward more song-driven terrain. In 2026, she went further. At a preview performance at St Pancras Church in London this past March, she debuted entirely new material — calling it “sad bitch music,” which lands differently than a press release calling something emotionally resonant. Her recent single “Heal” — sparse piano, strings, vulnerable alto vocals — marks the clearest departure yet from her dancefloor roots, and it’s this newer, introspective direction that The Dark Tour is built around.
About Emo’s Austin
Emo’s Austin at 2015 E Riverside Dr. holds 1,700 and operates under Live Nation, which makes it a natural fit given HAYLA’s existing infrastructure on that side of the industry. The Austin date falls in the middle of a tight three-night Texas stretch — Dallas on August 21, Austin on August 22, Houston on August 23 — aggressive routing for an artist attempting something as tonally different as this. She’s choosing mid-cap clubs rather than the larger rooms she’s occupied as a collaborator. That’s the correct read on where she is as a solo headline act: building her own Austin audience on her own terms, not borrowing someone else’s.
Tickets
Tickets for the August 22 show are on sale now via Ticketmaster. Doors open at 7:00 PM.