[Cover photo credit to Daniel Monkman]

Zoon, the Anishinaabe-Canadian Shoegaze project led by Daniel Monkman, has announced their upcoming third album, Happy Thought School, out June 19th, 2026, via Paper Bag Records. 

Zoongide’ewin, or Zoon, was a name meaning “bravery” and “a strong and fearless heart”, that was given to Monkman during a traditional sweat ceremony. Daniel is the second name they use as they move through the world.

To kick off the new era, Zoon has shared lead single,“One Too Many Nights,” (feat. Sam Jr.), an “anthem about finding yourself again after a relationship ends.” Monkman is joined by Sam Goldberg Jr. (Broken Social Scene) on this opening track. 

“One Too Many Nights” (feat Sam Jr.) documents “the psychological reordering that follows a breakup and the subtle rewiring of daily ritual and identity.”

As Monkman explains:

When a relationship ends, it’s not just the person you lose it’s the version of yourself that existed beside them. ‘One Too Many Nights’ is about that recalibration. I don’t date often, so when something shifts, it shifts my whole orbit. In that moment, being alone felt like the honest path forward.

The album covers other themes beyond relationship disintegration, and also “interrogates identity formation within unsettling hostility.” The album’s title track layers intergenerational recordings of their mother and aunt, who attended the same school as they were decades earlier and were not even allowed off the bus. 

The album’s title references Zoon’s experiences at a school in East Selkirk, Manitoba, where despite its optimistic name, they endured racism as one of the only Native students. Pop radio became refuge, including early-2000s Top 20 hits.