“Hear My Heart” is a personal record for Andy Mineo, a tribute to his big sister Grace who is deaf. “It’s just an honest record of me essentially apologizing to her for having never learned sign language growing up,” he explains openly during an interview with hip-hop culture icon and veteran Sway Calloway of Sirius XM’s Sway In The Morning.

To celebrate International Week of the Deaf 2016, a week recognized globally the last week of September to advocate for the Deaf Community, Mineo released his highly anticipated video “Hear My Heart” to support and raise awareness for this year’s theme “With Sign Language, I Am Equal.”

During a personal statement he penned for the release, Mineo explains, “I searched YouTube for ‘Deaf music videos’ and watched them with the sound muted. I noticed that though you could understand the words being signed, the sense of rhythm was lost. That’s when I had the idea to create a video where you could see the sounds you couldn’t hear. Where you could find the rhythm of the song even when the music was muted. We worked tirelessly on this video for over a year to make sure every sound in the song was translated into a three dimensional object that you could see and experience.”