Love doesn’t follow a neat storyline, and Jake & Shelby lean into that truth on their new album Learning To Love, out now.

The duo captures the full spectrum of connection, the rush of falling in, the slow fade of falling out, the wandering search for something you can’t quite put into words, and the soft surrender that comes when you stop fighting what’s honest. The album moves the way real relationships do: gentle one moment, heavyweight the next, always shifting, always human.

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While Jake & Shelby first built their world on stripped-back simplicity, Learning To Love opens the sound up wider. Their trademark closeness is still at the core, but this time richer, more cinematic layers surround it. With help from producers like Josh Ronen (Kelly Clarkson, Erin Kinsey), Micah Tawlks (COIN, The Brook & the Bluff), and a tight circle of collaborators, the duo crafts a textured backdrop of dusky beats, gleaming guitar colors, haunting piano lines, and jazz-kissed vocals that float between ache and release.

It’s intimate but expansive, a record that feels like a personal confession and a shared experience at once.

With the album now out in the world, we caught up with Jake & Shelby to unpack the theme that naturally pulled it together, the sound they’ve been chasing for years, and the track Shelby says she had to finish in one sitting because it felt too important to leave unfinished.

Fandom Daily: “Learning To Love” really takes listeners through all the ups and downs of love. What made you want to dive into that theme and explore every side of it, from the falling in to the falling out?

Jake & Shelby: We dove into the theme of learning to love because it is the season of life we’ve been going through. All these songs reflect times and feelings we’ve had and experienced. Some of these moments and feelings are from farther in the past, and someare  more recent. When choosing the songs for this record, it really all came together unexpectedly. We weren’t trying to have any specific theme at first. Just trying to see what felt right. But I don’t think it was a coincidence that these songs came together and fit all under a unified theme. We hope this record can connect with people. We hope it can join them in the highs and lows of life, learning to love others. It can feel tricky at times. So we hope these songs can bring you some peace in it all.

Fandom Daily: This album definitely feels like a new chapter for you two. What inspired you to move away from your usual stripped-back sound and experiment with a more layered, detailed production this time around?

Jake & Shelby: Great question! From the beginning, we’ve always imagined doing more full production on our songs. The first original we ever released was “You and me,” and it was a more full production. But then we went on to release “Just Us”, our stripped acoustic EP. We did that because we really wanted to capture what we were doing at the time. We were posting a ton on social media, and so many people were discovering us and our music. They were falling in love with just the two of us and one guitar. So we decided, “Hey, let’s capture this thing.” We both feel like the acoustic sound is always going to be an important part of our music to us. But now we are focusing on this new chapter with full production for this record! We searched for a long time and are really happy with where this record landed. It was a long journey trying to find what felt the most authentic to us. Now that we’ve released “Learning to Love,” it just feels so good. Something about actually having the record out sets your mind free from judging your own music. Now that it’s out, we both have a great sense of peace about it. We’re so excited for this new world of sound we entered, and we can’t wait to continue down this music journey with our fans!

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Fandom Daily: You teamed up with Josh Ronen and Micah Tawlks on this record. What was it like collaborating with them, and how did they help bring your vision for the album to life?

Jake & Shelby: It was amazing, we love getting to collaborate with others. That’s why we are a duo in the first place! Music is great. But it is amazing when you get to share it with others. This record had multiple different producers, including Micah Tawlks, Josh Ronen, Lucky West, Joseph Tilley, Will Honaker, and Kevin Lawson. All these guys were part of helping bring this album to life, and it wouldn’t be what it is without them. We are so thankful we got to work with each of them. They help bring what’s in our heads into reality. We do that ourselves as well, but they help it really sound good! It’s always super fun having a separate opinion in the room as well. We really respect all of their musicality and loved getting to collaborate with them on this record.

Fandom Daily: There’s such a raw, honest energy throughout these songs. Was there one track or moment that felt especially personal or maybe even tough to write?

Jake & Shelby: “Falling Out Of Love” feels the most personal to me (Shelby). It’s the only song on the album that I wrote by myself. I remember writing that song. I didn’t let myself get up until I finished it. That song is really close to me because I allowed myself to write whatever I needed to at that moment. I ended up writing about things that I didn’t know I would. I felt like someone was falling out of love with me at the time, but more recently, I realized that I really just didn’t love myself enough to fully accept love from someone else. I was searching for so much in someone else that I didn’t feel in touch with myself anymore.

Fandom Daily: Your chemistry as a duo really shines on this project. How do you blend your different musical styles — Jake’s guitar work and Shelby’s jazz-tinged vocals — without stepping on each other’s creative space?

Jake & Shelby: We think we got lucky :) We also create a space for it to be healthy for sure. We both feel very free to explore our creativity, and we both love hearing that come from each other. It never feels like a negative thing. If one of us has an idea or riff, etc., the other dives into that world with them. That’s the part we love about being in a duo. We get to have two different opinions. Two different minds and souls sharing in something. Practically speaking, our musical styles fit together well from the start. For the most part, we both like each other's favorite artists and love our musical styles.

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Fandom Daily: Now that “Learning To Love” is out and people have had time to sit with it, what do you hope listeners walk away feeling after hearing it all the way through?

Jake & Shelby: We hope it brings them joy and a sense of peace knowing we are all in the same boat. No one is alone in what they are going through. You can have a great sense of peace when you truly feel that and recognize that. Learning to love is a beautiful, fun, exciting, scary, hard, funny thing to figure out. We hope this record can be with you wherever you are in that journey