Aly & AJ

When the California sister duo of Aly & AJ released their dream-rock return in 2021—the epically titled a touch of the beat gets you up on your feet gets you out and then into the sun—it marked a new beginning. A decade and a half into their careers, the album was their most realized yet, the work of a band reclaiming itself. In the wake of the runaway TikTok revival of their 2007 hit, “Potential Breakup Song,” Aly & AJ transformed their foundation of Disney pop and TV sitcoms into a new vision of sparkling guitars, close harmonies, and highway sprawl, growing on their own terms.

They bottled that energy and ran. Mere months after the release of a touch of the beat, Aly & AJ headed back to the legendary Sunset Sound to begin work on its followup, With Love From. Tracking the album in one week in December 2021, Aly & AJ reconvened with many of the same collaborators (Jorge Elbrecht, Yves Rothman, Ryan Spraker, James McAlister) that helped make their previous record such a breakthrough. If a touch of the beat conjured the relief of catching a wind on the highway, With Love From breathes it in deeply. If a touch of the beat was about searching for yourself, then With Love From is about being. “Once we felt like we were on a roll…” AJ says, as Aly finishes her thought: “There’s been no stopping us.”

With Love From was recorded amid a touch of the beat’s whirlwind success, which brought them from “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” to “Good Morning America,” from the pages of Rolling Stone to NPR, from the stages of Lollapalooza and Austin City Limits to NYC’s Governors Ball—after which they spoke out at the March for Our Lives.

With Love From marks the first time Aly & AJ have been credited as co-producers, though they’ve contributed to the exacting decisions that direct their sound since their childhoods on Hollywood Records. (“There’s no one now to intimidate us,” AJ says. “That’s what it comes down to.”) Despite their considerable artistic growth, though, Aly & AJ still feel like their younger selves in many ways: excited about being in the studio, ambitious, dreaming together.