Archives: Artists

Tone Ranger crafts infectious dance music rooted in the mysterious beauty of the American Southwest. A composer, producer, and sought-after collaborator, he draws on a decade of wanderings through desert plateaus, remote forests, and multicultural borderlands to create soundscapes that are at once ancient and futuristic. Since his 2018 debut EP, Tone Ranger has become one of the most distinctive artists in the Southwest. From opening slots for electronic icons Orbital and Thievery Corporation to recent appearances at Shambhala and Burning Man, he has forged a reputation for transporting crowds into vivid sonic landscapes.

Maybe So weaves dream-like spacious melodies, creating an Earth-tethered 90s nostalgia sound– leaving you with the feeling of “I know I’ve been here before”. Their intimate sound melds heavy-hitting vocals and a melodic rhythm section that is sure to slap your soul back into your body. Hailing from Albuquerque, New Mexico, Maybe So has a strong local presence but has also driven the distance to take part in festivals such as Treefort Music Fest in Boise, ID and Chinati Weekend in Marfa, TX. They will be releasing their first full-length album in late summer of 2026 and continue to let the creative process take them to new and exciting places, both figuratively and literally.

A hollowed-out guitar, aching, echoing and haunted plays, pulling at our consciousness. By the time the lower guitar string pulls it back to earth, our ear moves from captivated to captured. “What I Lost” is a nagging reckoning. Margo Timmins’ lagging vocal suggests a laconic disorientation: things are there, yet, the world’s slipped into a void that almost defies expression. “I love the power of these songs and  the images they conjure. To me, they reflect more upon life and nature and the impact they have on us. Within our own humanity, there is great heartache and misery, but also great joy and comfort. There is nothing more humbling to me than the ferocious beauty we live amongst, including life and death.”

Such Ferocious Beauty is vintage Cowboy Junkies and another dimension from the lo-fi Canadian band comprised of, well, family. A tangle of sonic textures, Beauty is a rumination on aging, losing parents, facing mortality and creating space for one’s life in the midst of the ruin that comes from merely living. “Mike has never shied away from the darker, harder and sometimes uglier realities of our human condition,” Margo Timmins explains of the band’s singular focus, “nor has he shied from its beauty. Thankfully, with one comes the other.”

Michael Timmins, the oldest, is the chief architect; the songwriter and guitarist, who works with Margo on sculpting the emotional planes and vocal performances before bringing in younger brother Peter on drums and lifelong friend Alan Anton on bass to create the soundscapes that have made Cowboy Junkies a band who defies categories. Alternative? Rock? Americana? Roots? Perhaps the answer is a simple “yes.” The churning Beauty builds on all those things, evoking the best of a group who’s evolved over three and a half decades. Michael offers, “This record is connected to All That Reckoning. I see our recent work in a cycle: Reckoning, Ghosts, Such Ferocious Beauty. They were all done in very violent and tumultuous times. The violent side is so much a part of our society now; not just the physical, but the way we relate to each other. It’s hard to escape.”

What can’t be outrun becomes the thing that serves as an anchor. Written between the long isolating summer of 2020 and 2021, Michael would take leave of his family, travel to a cottage to focus on writing armed with books from DH Lawrence, Walt Whitman, Rilke, David Whyte, the Bible, the Odyssey and a desire to make sense of this phase of his life. His wife asked what he was writing about. “She knew everything that was happening, especially with my father, who was slipping into dementia. I said, ‘You can probably guess…’,” he reflects. “And she said, ‘Impermanence.’ If there’s one word that describes these songs, that’s it.”

While these ten songs serve as aural Rorschach takes on emotions, life, even fate, an unspoken common ground unites them. From the haunted blues of “Hell Is Real” to the languishing meander of “Knives” both delivered from singer to the listener, observing, cautioning, drawing back the curtain. They eventually come down to the same place: the individual and looking out into the world, asking ‘How do I fit into this? How do I keep my humanity?’

Whether drawing on a pop culture reference like a quote culled from Mike Tyson or mining Greek mythology, there’s an ease and fluidity to how Michael draws songs together. For the sinewy “Mike Tyson (Here It Comes),” he employs a high plains spaghetti Western tension that marries a nervy acoustic strum and tympani rolls to a creeping bassline, while “Circe & Penelope” deploys a wheezy fiddle and an acoustic guitar with its strings more flicked than strummed. “I love the blunt reality of this song,” Margo offers. “I love the two women’s strength and realistic view of the situation. They have a great love for their men, but also this discontent.

The image of these two women waiting for their men to return but getting on with the work that needs to be done and living their lives as strong women is truly empowering and reflects upon many of the women I know today.”

“Flood,” especially, leans into a dissonant, high-pitched electric guitar that dissolves into what feels like warning sirens. “The way I communicate urgency is through guitar. On ‘Flood,’ it flows through the entire song. I wanted to evoke pure urgency, so I wanted the guitar to be a  five-alarm fire. There’s no real solo, just this underlying howling, dissonant guitar to support the lyrics and not stay out of Margo’s way. That conflict raises the urgency.”

For a band formed in Toronto, Canada in 1985, selling 3,000 copies of Whites Off Earth Now!!! in 1986,then hit public consciousness with The Trinity Session in 1988, the ability to communicate volumes before the lyrics kick in defines an enduring career. Where most bands chase trends, the Junkies have stayed their course, maintaining a low impact excavation of melody and evocative language delivered sotto voce in Margo’s feathery alto.

 “The expectations and responsibilities of what we all do, it’s a big part of this. We’re still amazed that we’re doing this, but the longer (we have), the more fun it’s become. We don’t take it for granted,” Michael offers.  “We do what we do,” Margo agrees, “and it feels right for all of us. After 30-plus years of playing together, the band and its music are more important to us than ever. The music we make brings each of us a great sense of contentment, a knowing of place and a sense of doing what we were meant to do.”

For Beauty, Michael stresses that he and Margo spent more time working through the songs, letting her interpretations really settle before taking them into the studio. And once in the studio, he and Alan took the time to layer and experiment, to focus on the musical and aural foundation of the songs and to create even more dynamic tracks than they often do. “On The Trinity Session, because of the way the recording was done, you could hear a bunch of people in a room communicating with each other through their instruments. That’s what was best for that material. This is a different kind of recording; there’s a denseness to it. In many ways the music, the choice of certain structures, the tones used become as important in communicating the albums themes as do the lyrics; like the grating and sawing of the fiddle in “What I Lost”; the incessant circular bass/piano groove of “Flood”; the sound and attitude of the guitar solo in “Hard To Build”; and even the birds chirping in the background of “Blue Skies” and the frogs trilling away throughout “Hell Is Real”. It’s all there to add another dimension to what is also being communicated by the lyric and the vocal.”

With its fat, rolling bass line and wah-wah guitar solo over a lagging shuffle, “Hard To Build, Easy To Break” is a cautionary lob to “all the future kings and all the future queens, standing impatient in a row…”

“It’s about appreciation for what we have”, says Michael “even if what we have is imperfect. These days there seems to be this pull towards destruction. I’m more interested in the effort it takes to create something or the experience of  seeing something evolve; whether that be a relationship, or a glass vase, a reputation, or a democracy. On the flip-side of that is how easy it is to utterly smash and destroy whatever is at hand. The line ”Tend the flame that lit your way / stop worshiping the ash”, kind of sums

it all up for me”.

The string-bathed, electric guitar embroidered “Shadows 2” brings life’s end into focus: a son at his father’s bed as the world moves just beyond them. Michael remembers, “This song was inspired by the DH Lawrence poem ‘Shadows’ and more importantly, inspired by the last several months of our dad’s life. He was pretty much housebound and not very mobile so a visit would consist of just sitting beside him and not saying much. I would often wonder what was going through his mind as he sat there and stared out the window. He had dementia so there were times, especially as the dementia grew worse, when the conversations became very surreal. The song “What I Lost” is a reflection on those conversations and on his dementia. Memories of his flying days as a bush pilot in northern Quebec and his love of jazz and his experiences of seeing the great big-bands of the 50’s would often work their way into those conversations. I would often think about all of those memories and experiences that were slowly being eaten away by the dementia and would eventually completely disappear with his death. Lines like “This is what I lost” and “I can sit here and wait” from “What I Lost” and “Shadows 2” are not so much about him, but about me.”

“When I’m writing, I can’t say I’m thinking of the listener, but lyrically, I am trying to make sure the songs ring true to people outside our immediate circle. We are creating something to evoke emotion, to move people forward, because that’s what music does to me, to us. I want to make somebody feel the way I did when I heard Ziggy Stardust or Transformer for the first time; to spark something in the listeners heart and brain, just make them feel something, make them curious, make them wonder. That’s the point.”

Comprising four friends—Maisie, Mike, Jimmy, and Dev—from the coastal town of Frankston, Victoria, The Belair Lip Bombs craft heartfelt and hook-laden indie rock songs, connected by the group’s close bond and friendship.

The group made their most defining statement on 2023’s Lush Life—a record spanning 10 tracks of evocative exploration. The album tells stories that run a gamut of longing, seeking new horizons, and discovering paths to satisfaction and self-fulfillment. If debut albums are meant to serve as a gateway or first impression, Lush Life paints a vibrant and emotive portrait of a band truly finding their sound.

Since the release of Lush Life, the group has performed globally at Austin’s SXSW festival and The Great Escape in the UK. Locally, 2024 has seen The Belair Lip Bombs play at Laneway Festival and Golden Plains, alongside national tours supporting The Pixies, Hockey Dad, Militarie Gun, Blondshell, and more. The band has also embarked on a long list of headline tours in Australia, New Zealand, and the UK/EU—including sold-out shows across the UK and Australia.

Clover County is a collector – of life lessons, love letters, bottle caps, ticket stubs, and ones that got away. With the newfound perspective of her twenties, the 24-year-old singer-songwriter packages these memories and mementos from adolescence into her radiant debut album, aptly named Finer Things. Living in the space between folk, americana and alternative, Clover’s self-proclaimed genre of “bootgaze” is equal parts sonic descriptor and cheeky joke. “It started as a way to describe my music, but now I like to think of it as me reflecting on my thoughtful lyrics while staring down at the cute boots I’m wearing,” she laughs. Inspired by the winking charm of influences like Sheryl Crow and The Chicks, Clover blends the twang of timeless country songwriting with tongue-in-cheek observations on modern love. On Finer Things, Clover found a dream partner in producer Carrie K (Noah Kahan, Jessie Murph, Maggie Antone), who took seriously her intention to honor her experiences of girlhood, heartbreak and love in all its forms. “I set out to protect the femininity of these songs to honor the little girl I used to be,” Clover says. “I wanted to let the songs be sweet and youthful, and Carrie gave me the space to do that.” Following the release of her first single in 2023, Clover toured with the likes of Lord Huron, Shakey Graves, and Medium Build, honing her live sound while writing the songs that would become Finer Things. The result is a coming-of-age soundtrack that honors the blessings in disguise, the young loves that come and go, and the ephemera you pick up along the way. Clover County’s debut album Finer Things is set for September 2025 release via her own Undercover Lover Records and Thirty Tigers.

Folk music has a bad habit of being presented as a deathly serious concern. It’s something you cry to, it’s overly sacred, it’s solemnly considered by critic-historians. But Folk Bitch Trio, former high school friends Heide Peverelle (they/them), Jeanie Pilkington (she/her) and Gracie Sinclair (she/her), have a shared sense of humour that is embedded deep in their music, and that sets it alight, safe from the self-serious traps of the genre.

Now Would Be A Good Time, their debut album, tells vivid, visceral stories, and is funny and darkly ironic in the manner of writers like Mary Gaitskill or Otessa Moshfegh. Their music sounds familiar, but the songs are modern, youthful, singing acutely through dissociative daydreams and galling breakups, sexual fantasies and media overload, all the petty resentments and minor humiliations of being in your early twenties in the 2020s.

“Cathode Ray” opens with caution, its first harmonies arriving in big, looping sighs. It’s vulnerable but a little menacing, with a wide open chorus and a spacious, airy beat anchoring everything. “Moth Song”, a song about unrequited love and “being so spun out by everything that you feel like you’re delusional and hallucinating crazy things,” forms the album’s spare centrepiece, Anita Clark’s undulating violin part drifting in and out of focus as if from a dream.

Other songs aren’t as oblique, instead chronicling brutally familiar moments at the end of relationships: The tense, emotionally volatile torch song “The Actor”, says Peverelle, is about “going to your partner’s one-woman show and then getting broken up with”. “Hotel TV”, a hypnotic, late-night reverie, is about “having a sex dream about somebody else while next to your partner, and your partner being a liar,” explains Pilkington.

The strongest link between the trio, aside from friendship, is music. “We all talked about loving music when we were growing up, and knowing we wanted music to be a big part of our lives,” says Pilkington. That feeling—of music as an innate calling, as opposed to hobby or folly—was justified: Folk Bitch Trio have already toured across Australia, Europe and the US, supporting bands as disparate as King Gizzard, Alex G and Julia Jacklin. They’ve signed with Jagjaguwar, a home for singular icons and iconoclasts (Bon Iver, Angel Olsen, Sharon Van Etten, UMO and others), and they’ve found their first diehard fans with dazzling harmonies and acerbic lyricism that transcend genre expectations and audience lines.

These are the stakes: Learning how to live a life free of lovesickness and loser exes, when to sink into contemporary nihilism and when to have a laugh with your friends, and why being alive can feel so ephemeral and unreal. In this sense, Now Would Be A Good Time feels like a manual for modern living: a missive from three proud Folk Bitches finding beauty and wisdom where they can, together.

Malegría, Reyna Tropical’s long-anticipated debut full-length album, is at once a vibrant arrival and an electrifying bridge. The portmanteau, born from a 1998 Manu Chao song by the same name, is akin to bittersweet and blends the Spanish “mal” which means “bad” and “alegría” which means “happiness.” It marks Reyna Tropical’s movement from a duo to a solo project. The album is a contemporary celebration and continuation of wide-reaching cultural traditions—from Congolese, Peruvian, and Colombian rhythms to revolutionary artists like lesbian guitarist-singer Chavela Vargas—these influences meld and are remixed through the distinctive lens of trailblazing guitarist and songwriter Fabi Reyna. Traversing themes including queer love, feminine sensuality, and the transformative power of intentional relations to the earth, Malegría spotlights narratives often pushed to the margins and offers them a sonic homeland.

Formed in 2016, Reyna Tropical began as an organic, unhurried exchange between Fabi Reyna and Nectali “Sumohair” Diaz who met during a workshop series for emerging musicians. “Our first EP was so spur of the moment,” Reyna recalled. “What we needed was to document, to just do something for our hearts. Not for money, not for our livelihood. Just for us.” The band formed when Reyna had been immersed in full-time work founding and building She Shreds, the world’s first magazine dedicated to women and nonbinary guitarists, and was itching for a creative release and return to her musical roots. By January 2018, the band’s self-titled EP, Reyna Tropical, dropped and the foundations of the band’s spellbinding and distinctive sound were documented and formed. Best known for their rhythmic, hip-swaying tropical feel, the first Reyna Tropical tracks featured Ableton-made beats produced by Diaz—featuring Afro Indigenous drum patterns and environmental samples—expertly mixed with dreamy guitar riffs and soft vocals by Reyna.

After the EP’s release, and the debut single, “Niña,” was featured on NPR Alt.Latino’s “Songs We Love” series, newfound fans and opportunities alike flocked. By year’s end the band was regularly selling out shows, joined as support on Bomba Estéreo’s US tour, and began booking gigs for major festivals and shows including SXSW, Cumbiatón, and Colombia’s Baile Sagrado. The band released another celebrated EP, Sol y Lluvia, in 2019, created and recorded during creatively enriching extended stay in Colombia.

“Things kept coming—studio tours, gigs, and different opportunities,” Reyna said while reflecting on the changes the band went through during the transition. “We were like, ‘Whoa, this is so weird! It’s working,’ but we didn’t even know what it was working for.” In 2020, after eight non-stop years building a business without time off, Reyna withdrew to nature for a community retreat. It was during this moment of stillness that the purpose of her life’s work, beyond running She Shreds Magazine, crystallized. For the next two years, Diaz and Reyna immersed themselves in a tropical journey guided by the music—from Cartagena, Colombia to Fajardo, Puerto Rico and Cuaji (la costa chica de Guerrero)—along the way, invited into a harmonious relationship with local land, culture, and music wisdom stewards. Malegría is the culmination of self exploration fortified through an attunement to land—alongside Diaz and through his passing. From the interludes to the found sounds, Malegría offers a home to diasporic beings de aquí y de allá, diasporic beings who are in the process of searching for and returning to ancestral roots.

On “Cartagena,” the bright, multi-layered rhythms and vocals sing of feeling caressed and energized by the elements, and, at the core, there is the sense of a mutual exchange of trust and care between her and the land. By contrast, “La Mamá,” which opens in a seemingly-serene rainforest, builds into a drumline-backed battle cry denouncing the commercialization of healing and the spiritual tourists who seek only to extract from the environment—medicinal, or otherwise.

The interludes, which weave between each musical track, unfold a narrative all their own. “Goosebumps” and the subsequent “Singing” each offer peeks into the beautiful, unexpected push-and-pull that can transpire amid symbiotic collaboration. We, as listeners, are invited into the creative exchange between Diaz and Reyna, and the growing sense of power Reyna has found and is now sharing with others through her music. Meanwhile “Mestizaje” and “Queer Love and Afro Mexico” work together to chronicle the unlearning of erasure under a flattened definition of unity and, instead, uplift the importance of naming and celebrating distinct multifaceted identities and histories.

These sounds seamlessly blend into the final track, “Huitzilïn,” a tranquil, grounding ballad in which Reyna announces finally feeling her body, her spirit, her soul, and listening to all that surrounds her. “Huitzilïn,” the Nahuatl word for “hummingbird,” is a symbol of Indigenous strength in Mexico thought to guide those who are struggling to find their way home.

“I’ve always wanted to have a home—a place or a sound or a person to go to—because I think our people, who are severed from our lands and our histories and our stories and our communities, have for generations not really known where to go,” Reyna said. “There are times on stage where I can feel that my movement isn’t my movement. I can feel that I’m being moved by and I’m speaking for other people. I know in my body when my ancestors are there, when a decision is us.”

Whether enjoyed during listening parties or infectious live sets, the music will move listeners and irresistibly command a jump—into action in protection of the land, into the arms of a crush, into your own power and fearlessness, into steady body rolls along to the beat. Malegría offers us all a chance to witness history in the making.

—Emilly Prado

In any discussion regarding songwriters and lyricists of 21st century indie music, Alec Ounsworth and his moniker, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, will feature prominently. Few have been as consistently brilliant, eclectic, and intimate; fewer still remain defiantly independent, refusing to sign deals that compromise artistic vision. That is what characterizes Ounsworth’s oeuvre, especially the lifetime project he initiated sometime in the early 2000s, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. And with each release since its landmark self-titled debut, he has refined and broadened his sound, indulging an ever wider set of influences.

Prolific and enigmatic as ever, his recent works marry the quirky, left-field spirit of the early years with a well-earned confidence, and grander sense of scale and ambition. Always heading down new avenues of song arrangement and organic connection to his audience, after nearly two decades Ounsworth remains one of music’s most distinctive voices.

Over the past 20 years, The New Pornographers have proven themselves one of the most excellent bands in indie rock. They ’ ve constantly offered new sonic surprises with every album, and ‘ Continue as a Guest ’ is their greatest leap to date. The group ’ s ninth album and first for Merge establishes them alongside modern luminaries like Yo La Tengo and Superchunk when it comes to their ability to evolve while still retaining what made them so special in the first place.

When the members of Slow Pulp discuss Yard, their second full-length record and first for ANTI-, their vocabulary often defaults to synesthetic imagery and sensation.  

“We have so many visual cues for how we talk about music,” singer and guitarist Emily Massey says as she stops herself in the middle of explaining how the album’s second song, “Doubt,” sounds like wakeboarding. “Doubt is quite dark lyrically, but it is found in this upbeat and almost campy environment.” 
On Yard, the Wisconsin-bred, Chicago-based four-piece nestles comfortably into pockets of nuance, impressions, contradictions—sonics and lyrics finessed together to bottle the specific tension of a feeling you’ve never quite been able to find the right words for. In that regard, listening to Slow Pulp can feel like being in a room with someone who’s known you so long that they can read your every micro-expression and pinpoint exactly how you’re feeling before you can. Perhaps this spawns from the band’s own shared history and chemistry; in various ways, the four of them grew up—are still growing up—together.  

Guitarist Henry Stoehr and drummer Teddy Mathews attended elementary school together in Madison. Not long after, they met bassist Alex Leeds at the west side location of the now-closed local music program called Good’nLoud Music. And while Massey didn’t enter the fold until later on in college at the University of Wisconsin-Madison with Mathews and Stoehr, it turns out she was in the same program on the other side of town at Good’nLoud’s east side location. In fact, the chords to Yard’s addictive track “Slugs” are from a song Stoehr wrote for his crush in the sixth grade. “Imagination,” Mathews immediately chimes in with the name of Stoehr’s original. The album’s iteration of the song is, fittingly, also about a crush: “You’re a summer hit, I’m singing it,” Massey swoons over a warm wave of guitar fuzz and syrupy background vocals.  

With Leeds attending college in Minneapolis and the other members in Madison, the quartet started recording, playing shows around the Midwest, and eventually released their first EP as a four-piece, EP2, in 2017. It’s an intimate, restless, and decidedly lo-fi 17-minute debut by a band with an obvious knack for creating sticky hooks that tend to stay in the space behind your eyes long after the songs are finished playing. So obvious that, without much promotion on the band’s end, EP2 picked up traction across YouTube channels and blogs, and thanks to the power of the internet, Slow Pulp unexpectedly found themselves amid their first wave of buzz.  
 
In September 2018, the band relocated to Chicago and moved in together, writing and recording most of their Big Day EP at a cabin in Michigan the following January. As they put in the hours on stage and in the studio, the buzz continued to grow, they kept refining their work, and by 2019, they were touring with Alex G and working on their debut full-length record, Moveys.  

But the journey to Yard wasn’t linear: Massey was diagnosed with Lyme disease and chronic mono, leaving her to grapple with physical and mental health challenges amid a blossoming music career and the demands that come with it. Then, just days before the COVID-19 lockdown, her parents were involved in a serious car accident, and she moved away from Slow Pulp and back home to care for them. The band finished Moveys in isolation, with Emily recording her vocals with her dad, Michael, in his small home studio. It was their only option at the time, but the band opted to record the vocals with Michael again on Yard.  

“This time, we decided to do it because it went so well the first time. My dad is a musician and a singer and has a lot of really insightful things to say, especially about delivery,” Massey explained. “Working together we can be very honest with each other in a way that I wouldn’t be able to do with a stranger or a producer that’s not my family. He already has so much context for what the songs are about, knowing my life so intimately. He is able to be very direct, saying things I often don’t want to hear but need to hear. I think it often leads to getting the best takes out of me.” 

You can feel Massey reaching new vocal heights across Yard, particularly on the weepy americana ballad “Broadview,” which features pedal steel (Peter Briggs), harmonica, and banjo (Willie Christianson), and on “MUD,” a pop-punk track seemingly designed in a lab to belt along to in the car. On the raw-to-the-bone piano ballad title track, emotion trickles out of each of her careful words, cresting into waves of sustained wails. 

Massey’s dad wasn’t the only lesson from Slow Pulp’s pandemic-era album creation that the band brought to their next record; Yard first started taking shape in February 2022 when Massey was staying alone at a friend’s family cabin in northern Wisconsin.  

“I feel like there’s an interesting interplay between the albums, where the isolation during Moveys was forced, it was something we used intentionally with Yard,” Leeds explained. Isolation was an important part of their process on Yard, but they were able to employ it strategically. “Part of what we discovered—or what Emily discovered—is taking that time to be intentionally isolated is really important, as is being more collaborative at other times. We’ve learned a lot about balancing and being intentional about that through this process.” 

Themes of isolation and the subsequent process of learning to be comfortable with yourself sprout up throughout Yard, right alongside the importance of learning to trust, love, and lean on others. Within Slow Pulp, this trust between members is evident in the playful collaboration that remains core to Slow Pulp’s creative process. Take album opener “Gone 2:” the “2” was added when they decided to scrap the first version and record a new iteration of the track just before turning the record in. They saw the video for “Scar Tissue” by the Red Hot Chili Peppers playing (on mute) and immediately knew the visuals were exactly what they wanted the song to sound like.  

“It was a silver song and we turned it into a brown and purple song,” Stoehr says matter-of-factly, the other three nodding in agreement. The chilling desert desolation mixed with road-trip listlessness of the “Scar Tissue” visuals are evident in the song’s final mix and double down on its lyrics. 

“‘Gone’ is about searching for love in other people or searching for things and feeling like you’re not doing a good enough job at it or feeling like you’re coming too late to it,” Massey says. It’s followed by the taunting and upbeat “Doubt,” a track about begging someone to validate your insecurities. “I like that by the end of the album, you’re finding the love within yourself, not searching for it within other people. It has that full circle moment, in that way.” 

The lyrics to album closer “Fishes” were written while Massey was alone at the cabin, listening to Lucinda Williams (“Do you think Lucy understands?”) and watching the fish swim around in the lake. Yard leaves us with gentle strums, a stripped-back meditation on acceptance, and a reminder to show up for yourself: “Sink and swim and / Sink it all again / I’ve gotta catch myself this time / Like I know that I’m the prize / Like the fishes / And their winning size.”