Briston Maroney Presents: PARADISE!

For Briston Maroney, it's been a journey to arrive at the current moment. A mental, physical, emotional, and musical one. But it's left him equipped: not only with a deep understanding of self, discovered through life's trials and errors, but just as important, with a piece of art that reflects his personal growth. Sunflower, Maroney's debut album, is the culmination of the past decade of the now-22-year old's life. "It's all of the things I've been stoked about since I was 12 coming together," the wise-beyond-his-years, Nashville-based singer-songwriter says with a laugh of his striking album. "It's been a literal and physical relationship with the record as far as coming to a point where I understand what parts of me it represents, what it means to me as a person and what it means for my entire life."

Recorded between the summer of 2019 and early 2020 in LA with acclaimed producer John Congleton, Sunflower is "definitely a milestone," Maroney admits. "I'd be lying to say I didn't feel a little bit of that. And why not let yourself enjoy it?" It's also a gut-punch of fuzzy power chords ("Sinkin") and genteel acoustics ("Cinnamon"); deftly-composed pop songs ("Freeway") and hard-charging rockers ("Rollercoaster"). "I put all of myself into it," Maroney adds of the 10-track LP. In retrospect, he adds, "I definitely have this sense of calmness now. I did what I was capable of doing and I'm just glad I was around my friends and my people to help me get to this point."

An energetic live performer with a craft first honed in basements, living rooms, and jam-packed clubs, Maroney quickly developed a style steeped in the sweat and sounds of Nashville's DIY scene. After self-releasing his 2017 debut EP Big Shot and amassing a strong local fan base, Maroney ultimately attracted the attention of Canvasback Music. After signing with the label, his subsequent releases -- Carnival (2018), Indiana (2019), and Miracle (2020) -- remained entirely self-written with just a single producer credited on each project, namely Grammy Award-winning producer Tone Def and UK-based producer Jim Abbiss (Arctic Monkeys, Adele).

When Maroney began to tour the US and Europe alongside other artists, co-writing sessions became commonplace as they created music together while on the road. It was at this point he made the conscious decision that he would seek out additional songwriters and producers to work with on his debut full-length project; as Maroney's music world grew, so too did his desire for collaboration.

While Maroney is the first to admit he was 'terrified-in-a-good-way' to be working alongside top-notch talents with the likes of Manchester Orchestra's Andy Hull and venerated songwriter Dan Wilson on the creation of Sunflower, over time he came to understand a simple lesson. That being, "If you're approaching what you're doing from a place of love and kindness and passion you can be as open and flowing artistically as you want to be with your collaborators," he says. "I learned a ton from writing with those people," Maroney continues. "I think the biggest thing I took away is you get to decide how open you want to be, and you get to decide how much of a stage you want to set for emotions in songwriting."

If there was a sense of apprehension heading into such sessions, it's only because songwriting, for Maroney, has long been such a highly personal process. "It's been my journal for a really long time," he explains. "There's a beauty in songwriting. It's a scrapbook. It's a photo album. And if you're really putting your heart into what you're doing and writing songs for the right reasons, every one of them should take you back to a very specific place." For Maroney, the songs that comprise Sunflower take him along the long and winding path to the present, from his time as a young, upstart-tween musician busking at the Knoxville farmer's markets to playing dank basement gigs, sobering up amid personal struggles, and finally arriving right now at his most fully-realized self.

"Hopefully this record is representative of my journey," Maroney says, singling out the opening track "Sinkin" as summing up the record to him in a single cut. "Here's 100 percent of who I am," he says of the brash and bursting song. "It feels the most connected to my heart."

"I hope that people hear the record and see the songs as windows into what I've been experiencing and hopefully they'll relate to that," Maroney says, continuing. "I know these songs will continue to do that for me."

Working with producer John Congleton, Maroney explains, was about learning to trust his impulse. While Maroney had long been the first to question initial instincts, Congleton taught him to respect his gut. "He communicates really directly and really taught me a lot about speaking precisely and speaking about what you want to accomplish with a song and a record," Maroney recalls. "Whereas I have a tendency to be really abstract. I learned to be able to switch into that mode. He had my back the whole time."

Maroney gushes as he reflects on the session with Congleton that resulted in "It's Still Cool If You Don't." Their initial stab at writing together, "was the first experience of really letting go," Maroney contends of the song. "Just coming in and having a silly idea and being down to see where it goes." Working on "Cinnamon" alongside seasoned songwriter Jenny Owens Young, which Maroney describes as a "quieter more low-key song," was by contrast an exercise in "being all gushy" and exploring his feelings on love. "That was really fun to write a love song with someone else who was also in love with a person," Maroney offers.

Where "Rollercoaster," an older track that Maroney and his band typically closed out their sets with, was his attempt at getting a bit raucous, the track "Deep Sea Diver," which Maroney penned with Dan Wilson, was a far more meditative affair. Or as Maroney says with a laugh, "It's like, well, if this really pissed off angry rock thing doesn't work here's my best attempt at trying to be John Prine."

If anything, the process of assembling Sunflower was the best way Maroney learned to take his foot off the gas a bit and ease into his life in a more gratifying way. Where he admits at times throughout the recording process he was "squeezing it so hard," completing a brilliant debut album to him "was so much about just learning to be a little more laid back," Maroney says with a smile. "I still feel really connected to it, but I'm so stoked to share it and especially one day play it live," Maroney adds of Sunflower. "Right now, I am just so thankful and happy."

Bovine excision, a mysterious phenomenon involving the bloodless surgical removal of cattle organs, serves as the eerie inspiration for the opening track of Samia's third album, aptly titled Bloodless. Her voice flows through the evocative lyrics with ease, weaving through the gentle strum of a lone acoustic guitar. The quiet intimacy builds into a storm of sound, culminating in Samia's layered, ethereal harmonies that pierce with a haunting, macabre refrain: "And drained, drained bloodless." These emptied cattle evoke a grotesque vessel she unwittingly nurtured in an attempt to embody something both untouchable and on display, overflowing with infinite projections and capable of driving an unrelenting pursuit of the unattainable. Through sharp images—Diet Dr. Pepper and Raymond Carver as
parallel pursuits of minimalism, white underwear and leeches, a Degas dancer poised at the bannister—Samia examines a paradoxical existence where merit transforms into a calculated act of extraction ("I felt the pea, can I eat it?"). This is just one strand Samia weaves into the intricate tapestry of Bloodless.
Rich with layers that shift seamlessly from sparse folk to sweeping indie-pop epics, Bloodless explores Samia's relationship with a fragmented, symbolic version of Men—a patchwork of expectations and imagined standards she tried to meet, which ultimately shaped her sense of self. “I’ve spent the past two decades unintentionally conflating men with my understanding of God,” Samia explains. “The person I became in order to impress this imagined figure is inseparable from who I am today. With this album, I’ve tried to confront that head-on.”
Written & produced in both North Carolina and her new home of Minneapolis throughout 2024, Bloodless finds Samia reuniting with longtime-collaborator Caleb Wright and Jake Luppen for the highly-anticipated follow-up to 2023's revered Honey, which followed Samia's 2020's breakthrough debut The Baby. Across these thirteen songs, Samia grapples with the hollow form she once embodied — a vessel that gained value through its own absence, until playing dead became its own form of life. With Bloodless, she endeavors to disinter the self buried beneath these carefully constructed personas, ultimately reaching a place of acceptance for her whole, imperfect being.

California-reared singer-songwriter Jack Van Cleaf writes determined and delicate songs with poetic slant and confessional warmth. At twenty-six, Van Cleaf has taken stage at legendary venues across the country including Mission Ballroom, The Ryman, The Pageant, and Miller High Life Theatre. Intimate performances with Sofar Sounds have found Van Cleaf captivating audiences from New York City to Austin, Texas. He has opened for artists such as Noah Kahan, Briston Maroney, The Lagoons, and Taylor Ashton. Van Cleaf is currently gearing up to hit the road with Field Guide in spring of 2023.

Jack lives and writes alongside other young songwriters including Annika Bennett, Gatlin, and Ethansroom. In his songs, folk imagination dresses in cinematic production, evoking the spacious and sparse verses of Nathaniel Rateliff and Gregory Alan Isakov. His music also echoes his heroes: a directness borrowed from Kris Kristofferson and lucid spirituality reminiscent of Cohen.

Released in 2022, Van Cleaf's premiere full-length record 'Fruit from the Trees' opens like a lost suitcase. Written across a span of seven years, the ten tracks are stashed with fables and fictions, letters to high school lovers, loose change in foreign currency, and a white bandana chalked in red Texas dust. Co-produced by Jamie Mefford (Nathaniel Rateliff, Gregory Alan Isakov) and Alberto Sewald (Katy Kirby), the record soars with sonic width that melds the folk-song precision of Dawes with a rumbled raucousness suggestive of The Killers. Van Cleaf proudly introduced 'Fruit from the Trees' with a sold out release show in Nashville, TN in March of 2022.

The debut record was premiered on Atwood Magazine who sung its praises, calling it "achingly intimate, warm, and tender...a radiantly raw alt-folk reckoning." Van Cleaf's songs have garnered positive attention from editorial playlists, ranging from Jack's being featured on the cover of Spotify's 'Fresh Finds' to inclusions in 'New Music Friday (USA),' 'Fresh Finds: Folk,' 'Infinite Indie Folk' and more, plus features in Apple Music's 'New In Country,' Amazon Music's 'Breakthrough Folk' and YouTube Music's 'The New Americana.' Having lyrics that connect to so many, Van Cleaf's breakthrough song "Rattlesnake" has amassed over four million streams and his monthly listenership has organically increased from 1,400 to 370k since the song's release. Van Cleaf wrapped up 2022 with the release of his 'Music City Murder Ballad' EP, and inclusions on Spotify's "best of" roundups 'Fresh Finds Class of 2022,' and 'Fresh Finds Folk: Best of 2022.' Fresh off of Noah Kahan's winter leg of his sold-out 'Stick Season' tour, Van Cleaf released his volcanic newest single "Terrestrial Man."

hey, nothing is Tyler Mabry and Harlow Phillips -- two highschoolers from just outside of Atlanta, Georgia. Meeting for the first time six years ago, the immediate best friends have spent nearly every second crafting their earworm Indie-Folk since. Combining the melodic stylings of Modern Baseball with the lyrical wit reminiscent of Pinegrove, these feel-good troubadours tell us that the lost sounds of the last 20 years are back, in a big way.

Recently releasing Halloween-anthem, "i haunt your dreams," to significant support (New Music Friday, Lorem, All New Indie), the dynamic duo is set to perform a hometown Holiday show at the Masquerade in Atlanta this December. This will set the stage for the release of their debut body of work and nationwide tour, slated for Summer 2023. Needless to say, there's a big year in store for fans of the band -- Yomp!