Some songs are designed to gut-punch you. Others, like gracie’s new single “Hot Air Balloon,” are designed to lift you straight out of your own head and into the clouds — which, if you’ve ever spent any time lingering in the heavier corners of her catalog, feels like a victory lap well-earned.

The freshly minted Tooth & Nail Records signee shared the dreamy new track today alongside a visualizer, marking the final preview before her forthcoming album Miss Misfortunately arrives on June 26. And what a way to land the plane (or, more aptly, the balloon). Built around a strolling, ’50s-style waltz and draped in gracie’s shimmering vocals, “Hot Air Balloon” feels like the soft exhale after a very long, very loud cry.

“‘Hot Air Balloon’ is my big finale — it’s the bow on the present,” gracie says. “It’s my ‘finally happy’ song, amidst a sea of depression. I made it out on the other side.”

That arc — from wreckage to release — is the backbone of Miss Misfortunately. The album is the long-overdue reckoning with a brutal past breakup gracie had been carrying around for years, finally given the proper forum thanks to a new team in 2025 who backed her vision without flinching. Throughout the year, she holed up in Nashville with producer Austin Davis, bonding over a shared obsession with early-2000s rock bands and building a record that splits the difference between artful alternative pop, rock grit, and indie intentionality.

You can hear the fingerprints of her formative loves — Paramore, My Chemical Romance, Sleeping with Sirens, Pierce the Veil, State Champs — alongside the big-voice influence of Céline Dion, Whitney Houston, and Barbra Streisand, all funneled through a songwriter who’s been quietly sharpening her pen since she sold burned CDs of her first original song to family and friends as a kid.

“I’m not making music because I want to be successful; I’m making music because I have to,” she says. “I need to tell an authentic story. The record is about being human, laughing at yourself, telling scary stories, and holding nothing back.”

“Hot Air Balloon” is the bow she ties on it all — proof that, sometimes, the happy ending really does show up at the end of the tracklist.

Stream “Hot Air Balloon” here: https://gce.ffm.to/hotairballoon

Watch the visualizer: https://youtu.be/sl2iSkLcafI

Pre-order Miss Misfortunately, out June 26 via Tooth & Nail Records, here: https://gce.ffm.to/mm