• 🎙️ Aivila discusses moving from Houston to Tucson and gradually finding connection in the city’s community and music scene.
• 📍 After about a year in Tucson and several months downtown, Aivila describes beginning to put down creative roots in her new home.
• 📝 Her debut album, Reflection, follows an emotional path from connection through a relationship and toward healing.
• 🎙️ Aivila writes her own lyrics and melodies and creates layered vocal harmonies as part of her sound.
• 📝 The single “Gone” draws from Aivila’s teenage experiences and recovery journey, with her mother contributing backing vocals.
• 🚋 Aivila is seeking Tucson opportunities to perform, collaborate and bring more of her music into the local conversation.
• 🎙️ She describes her music through pop, R&B and an increasing pull toward soul, citing Amy Winehouse and Ariana Grande among her influences.

Aivila arrived in Tucson from Houston with a debut album already taking shape and a desire to find her footing in a new musical community. In this conversation with Tom Heath, the vocalist and writer reflects on the move, the welcome she has begun to encounter around town, and the work of making songs that feel true to her experience.

Her music moves among pop, R&B and soul, but the through line is a personal one: lyrics and melodies written from feeling, layered harmonies built with intention, and room for listeners to locate their own stories in the songs. The episode offers an early look at an artist settling into Tucson while continuing to define her sound.

Making a Home in Tucson’s Music Community

Originally from Houston, Aivila had been in Tucson for about a year when this conversation was recorded, with several months spent downtown. She describes the transition as rough at first, then increasingly promising as she began to feel connected to the community, environment and daily rhythms of her new home. That gradual adjustment gives the conversation its local texture: this is not a finished arrival story, but a musician learning the city from within.

For Aivila, entry points to a music community can be practical and personal. She mentions starting with a nearby record store, where she has found people open and kind, and says she had already received offers for listening parties at wooden tooth. Her collaborations to that point had been Houston-based, but she is looking for opportunities to perform, meet people and share work in Tucson. The hope is straightforward: to sing, to get her music heard, and to participate more fully in the creative network around her.

Reflection, Honesty and the Work of Writing

Aivila recorded her debut album, Reflection, in Houston shortly before moving to Tucson, returning afterward for minor adjustments. She describes the album as an emotional arc that begins with connection, travels through a relationship and arrives at healing. Rather than treating that structure as a distant concept, she grounds it in the way she writes: the songs are tied to what she felt at the time.

That commitment to honesty shapes both the subject matter and the process. Aivila says she struggles to put pen to paper when a song does not feel genuine, though she can also write by imagining how she might feel in a situation. She cites “In Your Head” as an example of working through hesitation around trust and the prospect of a relationship. Looking back at earlier material can bring new perspective, too; she sees songwriting as a place to revisit emotions, recognize her own dramatics, and keep moving.

The conversation also makes clear that Aivila’s authorship extends beyond lyrics. She writes her melodies and creates stacked harmonies, describing herself as self-taught while remaining open to learning and to caring for her voice. Singing, writing and performing are not competing pursuits for her. Each offers a different kind of freedom, and together they make up the outlet she continues to build.

“Gone,” Vocal Layers and a Soulward Sound

The recent single “Gone” carries a particularly direct personal history. Aivila says the song draws on her experiences as a teenager, including time in the troubled teen industry and treatment, as well as her recovery journey. She wanted the release to stand on its own and chose to put it out on an anniversary that she wished to reclaim with something productive. In that context, the song became an act of expression made primarily for her own healing.

Her mother appears as a backing vocalist on “Gone,” a detail that Aivila connects to a journey they share. The song’s production also opens a window into how she thinks about vocals. While Tom Heath responds to its prominent bass line, Aivila explains that she uses her voice as an instrument, building effects through stacking and harmonies because she does not play other instruments. The aim is not merely decoration; it is part of how she gives a song shape and feeling.

Asked to describe her style, Aivila names pop and R&B, then identifies soul as the sound she expects to explore more deeply in her next project and upcoming releases. She names Amy Winehouse’s rawness, sadness and lyricism as an influence, alongside Ariana Grande’s vocal stacking and harmonies. Yet she resists narrowing herself to one model. Her larger goal is to make poetic work specific enough to be honest, while leaving enough space for listeners to interpret it through their own lives.

Conclusion

Listen to this episode of Life Along the Streetcar to hear Aivila talk about Reflection, “Gone,” vocal experimentation and the early stages of building a musical life in Tucson. It is a conversation about finding community without losing the personal voice that brought the songs into being.

Editorial note: This conversation has been lightly edited for clarity while preserving its substantive content and original sequence.

Welcome to Life Along the Streetcar

Tom Heath: Welcome back to another episode of Life Along the Streetcar, where we cover the social, cultural, and economic impacts happening within the urban core. We define that as University of Arizona to A Mountain, and we’re proud to uncover hidden gems in this community.

Today’s show is all about that. We have an up-and-coming artist, someone new to me. I’ve had a chance to listen to her music, and I’m excited to be talking to her at this stage so that, when she’s famous, I can say, “Oh yeah, I knew her way back then.” I want to welcome in Aivila. Thank you for joining us today.

Aivila: Thank you for having me, Tom. I’m so excited to be here.

Tom Heath: I understand from Enrique Aldana that you are a musician. You like the music?

Aivila: I’m a vocalist and a writer. Musician, yeah.

Finding a Home in Tucson

Tom Heath: Let’s talk a little about you first. Tucson is not your hometown?

Aivila: No. Houston, Texas, is my hometown.

Tom Heath: How long have you been here?

Aivila: I’ve been in downtown Tucson since January, and in Tucson as a whole for about a year.

Tom Heath: How are you finding Tucson?

Aivila: At first it was a little rough, but now I feel like I’ve got my feet in the water. I’m really falling in love with the community and the environment. The weather is crazy, as that may sound, but I’m really enjoying it.

Tom Heath: What about the music scene? Are you getting connected with people here?

Aivila: I’m starting to.

Tom Heath: I’ve talked to a lot of musicians on the show, and some of them have been in L.A., Austin, and other places. As they’ve gotten more accustomed to Tucson, they have found that we have a really strong community base here for music.

Aivila: Yeah, and I keep hearing so many great things about it. You can even start with the nitty-gritty of it, like going down to the nearest record store and starting there. Everybody is so kind and so open. I’ve already been offered listening parties at Wooden Tooth, and it’s just been really great.

Tom Heath: Nice. So you have an album out?

Aivila: I have one album out.

Tom Heath: I’m pushing too far. You have an album out, which is pretty impressive. It was recorded when you were in Houston?

Aivila: Yes, I recorded that right before I moved here. Right when I moved here, I would visit back just to do some minor tweaks.

Tom Heath: At what point in your life did you know that this was a path for you? Do you ever remember not being interested in this?

A Self-Taught Artist and Songwriter

Aivila: No. I feel like, with certain things, it’s in your soul. I think you know, and ever since I was a child, I knew, like, I’m going to be singing.

Tom Heath: Have you gone through classical training, or are you all self-taught?

Aivila: I’m all self-taught right now. I’m always open to learning. I think that’s the most important thing. I want to keep my voice healthy and all the things, but as of right now, only self-taught.

Tom Heath: You mentioned that you’re also a writer, so you’re writing your own music?

Aivila: Yes. All of it is completely written by me.

Tom Heath: The vocals and the lyrics, or the lyrics and the melodies, or everything?

Aivila: Yes.

Aivila: Stacking harmonies, all of it.

Tom Heath: That’s incredible. You’re fairly new in your career, but to be doing all of that and have an album out, that’s amazing.

Aivila: Thank you.

Tom Heath: Everybody hates this question: What do you like best? Is it the singing, the writing, the performing? What is it that really drives you?

Aivila: It’s all different. It all has its own special way of coming into something really great and beautiful. I can feel so free if I just let go and I’m singing for anybody. But I write what I feel, so the outlet itself doesn’t feel like work. It doesn’t feel like, “Oh, I need to get something done.” There’s not one thing I can say I like the most.

Reflection and Writing from Experience

Tom Heath: That’s always a good answer. No one ever likes, “Which is your favorite kid?”

I listened to a few songs on Spotify, and there’s an emotional weight. Your lyrics are fairly heavy in some regards, and, honestly, from an outside perspective, it’s something I would expect to see from a more seasoned musician, someone further along in their career. But to hear this as a first album—are these you, or observations? Where do you come up with this inspiration?

Aivila: It’s all me. When it comes to my album Reflection, that’s out right now, I take you through the motions, and it almost tells a story. If you start from the beginning, it can start as, “Oh, I’m feeling this connection,” and by the end, you went through the relationship and now you’re learning to heal.

Aivila: For that, it’s all me. I really struggle to put pen to paper if it’s not genuine, so anything written was exactly how I felt in that moment. I have some projects where I can take a step back and be like, “If I felt this way, this is how it would make me feel.” So that’s one like “In Your Head.” I wrote that in a sense of, you know, I’m too scared to leap into a relationship or really trust anybody. But if I did, these would be the reservations I’m having with myself during the process of starting to trust.

Tom Heath: So you become your own therapist?

Aivila: Pretty much, at this point.

Tom Heath: You’re putting yourself in all these different positions: How would I react to that?

Aivila: Exactly.

Tom Heath: Do you ever go back and listen and say, “Oh no, I was way wrong. That is not how I…”

Aivila: All the time. I think that’s the—

Aivila: Beauty in it. I can look back and be like, “Wow, I was really being dramatic even then.”

Tom Heath: The song that resonated really well with me—I don’t know if it was on the album; I think it was a newer release—was called “Gone.”

Aivila: Yeah.

Tom Heath: That’s fairly new?

Aivila: That is fairly new. That was my last release.

Tom Heath: I listened to it, then went back and listened to it again, because it seems like there’s a lot of things being pulled through that song. Can you tell us a little bit about it?

Aivila: Of course. I want to always be very honest about my journey as a person and my recovery. That song, to me, is very much, “This is what I went through as a teenager.” I was in and out of the troubled teen industry and treatment. To me, that one’s a little more in your face.

The Personal Healing in “Gone”

Aivila: I listen to that one, and I’m like, “Oh, I’m so obvious.” This is me just being like, “Where are these clothes?” When you go to a treatment facility, you change your clothes. It’s stuff like that. That one really was just an outlet. I also sang it with my mom. She is a backing vocalist in that song. It’s so much more direct. I’m doing that for me and only me.

Tom Heath: And that for your mom. It sounds like there’s a little bit of some motherly love in the song.

Aivila: Of course. For us, this is our journey in a sense. But if I’m putting something out like that, it’s all for me. I write for myself, but that I put out for my own journey, for my own healing.

Tom Heath: It was very powerful. It may have been obvious, and that’s probably why I picked up on it, but I thought it was very powerful. When I met you and your mom and she said her name was Jessica, I thought, “Wait a minute, I recognize that name.”

Tom Heath: I did notice some of your songs have collaborations and you work with different musicians. Those would then be Houston-based musicians?

Aivila: So far, they’ve been Houston-based.

Tom Heath: As you get into the Tucson scene, I think you will find that there’s a lot of interest in collaboration here as well. I hope you do. It’s been welcoming to a lot of musicians, and I think your perspective, coming from a larger city and what that looks like, will be helpful for some of them as well.

Aivila: Absolutely.

Tom Heath: Are you performing? Are you out there, or are you simply recording right now?

Aivila: I’m trying to get in anywhere I can. I want to perform. I want to sing. I’m just here to sing. My last performance was in Houston, but right now I’m trying to work on outreach to find places for me to sing and also get more of my music out as well.

Vinyl and the Listening Experience

Tom Heath: I think a listening party at Wooden Tooth would be a fantastic way.

Aivila: They’re so much fun.

Tom Heath: They have such a devoted following, too. Do you have vinyl?

Aivila: I’m in the process, actually. I just got my first test pressing in the mail for Reflection, so that is underway, happening very, very soon.

Tom Heath: That’s such an interesting world for me because vinyl was what it was, and then if you had vinyl, you were so old school. Now it’s such a popular way to listen to music. What is it about vinyl that makes the experience different than electronic or downloading?

Aivila: I think you can go in and have no idea what you’re going to leave with when you walk into a record store. Simply picking up something because it looks interesting, you don’t know what you’re going to get. You’re going to get so much more of an authentic listen. You might find something you never even knew sound could sound like.

Aivila: That’s a really great experience, in my opinion.

Tom Heath: Do you feel that there’s any difference in the actual music? Does it come across differently in vinyl than in other outlets?

Aivila: I think it can, vibrationally and through all that. It most definitely can. It can be more of a raw experience rather than just opening up a screen and picking something interesting.

Tom Heath: When I was listening to “Gone,” I was driving. As you’re talking through what I think are probably some dark periods in your life, there’s a really heavy bass line that vibrates. I actually stopped the music because I thought there might be something wrong with my car. Then when I listened to it, it physically pulled me into the song. I thought that was so creative. Was that intentional, or was I just making things up?

Using the Voice as an Instrument

Aivila: I think everything’s intentional, but I think that might have been a coincidence.

Tom Heath: I thought it was brilliant.

Aivila: I will take it. I do try and do things like that with my stacking and my harmonies, because I like to use my voice as an instrument. I can’t play any other instruments, so I might as well make my voice sound like this or give this effect.

Tom Heath: There’s definitely that bass line. If you listen to it again, it physically put me into your song, and I felt like I was experiencing some of that—I don’t want to say darkness—but some of that heaviness as you were doing it. It was probably intentional; I just didn’t realize it was so intentional.

Aivila: Right.

Tom Heath: It just felt right.

Aivila: Most definitely intentional. Just letting go.

Tom Heath: So, has “Gone” part of a new album you’re working on?

Aivila: No, I wanted “Gone” just to be as is. I really just wanted it out. It was like an anniversary for me when it was put out, so I thought I’d rather take back the day for myself and do something productive with it. I actually wanted to put “Gone” out a year ago before it wasn’t ready. But this time, I texted my team and I was like, “Guys, let’s just do it. I don’t care about promotions. I just want this out.”

Tom Heath: Your team—can you tell me a little about your team?

Aivila: I work with SoSouth back in Houston. They’re music distributors. They’re really great. They’ve been helping me throughout the process. They give me the most freedom with everything. I basically tell them what I want, in a sense, and it gets done.

Tom Heath: How would you describe your style of music to someone who hasn’t listened to your music before?

Soulful Influences and Universal Songs

Aivila: Gosh, that’s always such a hard question, because there’s pop, and then I’d say there’s R&B. But also my true sound, which I explore so much more on my next project, my second album, and these upcoming releases, is soul.

Tom Heath: You can feel that in your voice. Your voice has a very interesting range, because you can definitely hear the higher pop, but you can feel that soul coming through in some of those songs as well. I was very impressed with the range. I’m not a music person—I love music, but I don’t fully understand music—but sometimes I’ll hear things and think, “Wow.” From a layperson’s perspective, it’s incredible to have that sort of depth of voice so early in a career. It seems like those are things that would be learned over time, but you’re coming out of the gate with that, which is fantastic.

Aivila: Thank you.

Tom Heath: Who influences you? What are you doing to stay creative and vibing like this?

Aivila: I take a lot of inspiration from Amy Winehouse. But that’s always such a hard question for me, because I find that I haven’t been able to subject myself to one specific person. I love Ariana Grande and all that she does with her stacking and her harmonies. She’s just insane. I want to see what her Pro Tools looks like. It’s wild what I’ve heard that woman does.

But also, the rawness and sadness that would come from Amy Winehouse, and her lyricism, has always really stuck out to me. I love everything to be poetic. I think the most important thing about music is that, at the end of the day, it’s art and it’s subjective. I want to write for people to relate to it in any way possible. I feel like Amy Winehouse most definitely did that. Even though it was so specific to her, I could take that and turn it into something about me. I really hope people can do that with my music as well.

Tom Heath: I think you can feel that. I listened to a very little sampling of it, but there are definitely things in there that were universal. That’s why I was asking earlier if they were specific to you, because they seemed like they could apply for somebody who observed that. But knowing that you’ve gone through this, I think other people listening would be like, “I recognize that.” Maybe some of the things you think are obvious, that I didn’t think were obvious because I haven’t had your journey, other people might latch onto and say, “I know where she is. I know where she’s been. I know what she’s talking about.”

Aivila: Exactly.

Tom Heath: I think it’s fabulous.

Aivila: That’s exactly what I go for with it. Sometimes I try to be not less specific, or so on the nail, with how I feel, because I want it to be interpreted.

Tom Heath: Sure, that makes sense. I would imagine there’s got to be a little something, part of you, that has to be you and not—

Where to Find Aivila

Aivila: Open to the world, spilling all my beans to everybody.

Tom Heath: Where do people find you right now? How do they follow you? I’m sure you’re on that social media thing.

Aivila: Yeah. I am @AivilaRecords on all social media, Aivila Records. And for any music streaming platform, it’s just Aivila.

Tom Heath: We’ll put some fancy graphics on the screen there to help people find that as well. Any last things you want to leave us with as we’re wrapping up?

Aivila: Stay tuned. Look out for the vinyl coming soon to maybe our local record stores, especially here in Tucson. I have some really great, fun stuff planned coming.

Tom Heath: If people want to collaborate, or they have an outlet for you, is social media probably the best way to get ahold of you?

Closing the Conversation

Aivila: Yeah, just reach out. I am pretty active on there. Also, my email: AivilaRecords@gmail.com. I’m constantly looking, if you want to email me there.

Tom Heath: I greatly appreciate your time. I’m excited to see where your future goes. I’m glad you’re here in Tucson so we can watch you grow from here. I hope you stick around for a while so we can claim you as our own when you’re a superstar.

Aivila: Thank you so much for having me.

Tom Heath: It’s been absolutely my pleasure. Thank you for tuning in for another episode of Life Along the Streetcar. Each week, we like to bring you those hidden gems, the people who are making things happen within the urban core. Our music for the show comes from Ryanhood. Each week, they give us the opportunity to play their song “Dillinger Days.” James Portis is our executive producer. My name is Tom Heath. I have the privilege of being your host.

As I’m learning about this social media stuff, I encourage you to like, subscribe, and share. I’ve never used that phrase on the show before, so click some buttons and make us more famous than we are right now.

Tom Heath: I hope you tune in every Sunday for more Life Along the Streetcar. Until next time, stay curious, Tucson.