Fishing is a self-care ritual. It’s a lesson in patience, presence, and for R&B/soul artist Fana Hues, the inspiration behind her latest EP, Catch n’ Release. “I was in a creative rut,” Hues told ESSENCE. She had been working on the project since late last year, “I was making all of these songs and I didn’t know where they would live.”

So, she returned to the water where she’d been fishing for the past five years to lower the stakes. Just like the ritual of fishing, “catch a vibe and release it, catch a vibe, release it, call it Catch n’ Release,” she recalled her manager telling her about how to approach her music. “It was very free.”

Instead of telling a story through an album, the six-song project has no arc. Rather, “it has more energy than things I’ve done in the past,” she says. From “Sweet n’ Sour” to “Red Wine Holiday,” “I wanted it to feel like a day on the lake, so it’s brighter.” Meanwhile, the cover is full of emotion, depth, and cinematic grit. She has long, creek-kissed hair, eye-shaping blush, and an outstretched fishnet manicure gripping her big catch of the day. 

Like her songs, she’s capturing the emotion of longing and yearning, followed by the jubilee of catching something. Then, the humanity of releasing it. It’s a type of fluidity that’s cast through the visuals, which span fashion, beauty, and romantic landscapes. “Texture is a big thing for me,” she says about her style in the EP’s visuals. “I wanted [it] to feel like a romantic novel.” 

On the cover, she’s transfixed in front of a classic, natural background wearing a fishnet dress, seashell jewelry, and a bait bag to represent the tactical fashion of fishing. “[My style] has always been nature-based, whether I realized it or not,” she says, which has evolved throughout her full discography. 

In her first album cover, Hues, for example, was shot on a leafy hill at blue hour in Las Vegas while she wore a white wedding dress cradling fruit and weeds. Then, there was flora + fana, which imagined her in a bubble floating over red rocks in reference to Stevie Wonder’s Talking Book album. Finally, her Neo-Soul album, Moth, illuminated her like a moth to a flame. 

“Nature has been the color throughout my entire discography as far as visuals,” she says. “It’s practical, tactical, but still exaggerated.” And Catch n’ Release proves her interpretation of this style is just doing what feels right. 

What’s next for Fana Hues, then, is a continued evolution of what comes naturally to her. She has a show at the Regent in Los Angeles, and her next project, Catch n’ Cook, is dropping in the fall. Until then, she’ll be stringing bait on her hook, catching, and releasing.