Indie-pop musician BEL (Isabel Whelan) grew up in the small town of Clovis, California, as the youngest of five siblings. “I knew I loved music and loved singing, but I had no idea how to pursue it,” she recalls. “It was really just about getting scrappy with things and reaching for creative outlets” — specifically theater, choir, and orchestra, where she played the violin. BEL possesses the gentle soul of a folk songwriter with the alluring sensibilities of a classic pop artist. As a young girl, she was frequently teleported to the Laurel Canyon scene of the 1970s by the timeless songbirds who sparked her creative aspirations. “The biggest influence I had was my mom showing me all of her favorite artists from when she was growing up — Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, Stevie Nicks. We would always sing and harmonize to their songs together in the car,” she says of her Argentine mother, a Spanish-language professor. “Music really opened my world.” In October 2025, BEL will release her very first full-length Holy Grail (Nettwerk), a contemplation of her hard-earned ascent from aspiring musician to an actualized one, a journey that’s been at once surreal yet all-too-human. “The theme for this album,” she explains, thoughtfully, “is letting go of expectations and trusting the process of chasing your dreams.” Although she has made this look effortless, it’s been an emotional trajectory. “I had a lot of moments where I was like, ‘I hope I didn’t make a mistake,” she recalls, of quitting her 9-to-5 job. “But inside of me, I knew I had to try.” BEL sets the optimistic tenor of her album with her breezy first single, “Fresh Start,” about the doubts that accompany even the best changes in your life. This tension between in-the-moment doldrums and wishfully looking ahead is a familiar refrain throughout Holy Grail: Everything from the bedroom pop of “I Want” to the bright, dance-y “Parachute” negotiates this push and pull. “With ‘Parachute,’ I wanted to end the album on a high note,” she says. “Originally, when I wrote this song, it was slower. When I sped it up, it took on a more anthemic sort of feeling.” BEL has a rare gift for making the topics of self-doubt and defeat both palatable and relatable. “It’s special when people tell me how much my music has helped them through things or just made them feel understood,” she notes. “Once a listener flew all the way from Germany to Dublin to see me play.” By the time she landed in Los Angeles, BEL was instinctively DIY in her approach. “I played a lot of shows with songs that I had written for a while. I just hadn’t recorded any of them yet.” As impossible as it seemed to achieve her dream, she knew nothing would come without perseverance. “How fundamentally human is that feeling of wanting more,” she says, “even though you’re rich in many other ways?” Raised to value the tight-knit bonds that come from being a part of a large family, BEL has come to nurture meaningful, loyal connections with her audience, too. Because well before she ever earned accolades from Sirius XM, Rolling Stone, NPR, Spotify, and Apple (for her Jet Lag and Read the Room EPs), her validation came from the fans she’d meet while performing live as a UCLA undergrad — and later, opening for indie acts such as Cold War Kids, Boyish, Gatlin, Girlhouse, BAILEN, and The Rare Occasions. Fittingly, many of Holy Grail’s first ideas came to her on the road, while BEL was on tour. “I got inspired from traveling and being able to see the outside world more, and then bringing that into the sessions,” says BEL, who worked with executive producer Jason Vance Harris (Role Model, Juliet Ivy) to finish the album. She’d come into sessions with ideas, often writing on the guitar, alongside collaborators including Miya Folick, Sarah Tudzin (Boygenius, Illuminati Hotties), John Mark Nelson (Suki Waterhouse, Shaboozey), among others. There was never a shortage of life’s lessons to draw from. “I have a million Voice Memos, and my Notes app is full of a bunch of random, different lyric ideas,” she says.  Still, she hasn’t forgotten how she got to this place. For instance, “Amor” is a sweet, pensive-pop track about the temptation to seek comfort from an old flame, which “came from a place of being frustrated with the dating scene,” she says. But it also includes Spanish-language verses, a loving nod to her bilingual upbringing. “The closeness I have felt to people,” she adds, “makes me know that there are infinite ways to feel close to somebody that is right for you.” This romantic unrest comes to an apex in “Look It Up,” which channels the self-possession of the ’70s introspective folk of her mother loved so much, with the angsty indie rock of Liz Phair. Co-written with Tudzin, BEL says approvingly, “If I came up in the ’90s, I would be writing more like this.” Inviting celebrated collaborators into her creative process was new to BEL, but it ultimately challenged and inspired her. “I feel like that really is an overarching theme of the album: learning how to let go and to still be hopeful,” she says. The optimism is authentic and contagious because it’s hard-wired into her outlook. “I have a brother with a really rare genetic condition — fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva, or FOP — and I’ve always been hopeful that they’ll find a cure for it,” she explains. “That influences a lot of how I look at the world.” This, too, has shaped what she chooses to put into it, despite the increasing temptation, culturally, to become cynical. Things may not be perfect, but BEL is still one to count her blessings. “When I was writing this album, I knew that it was going to be called ‘Holy Grail’ once I wrote that song,” she says of the penultimate track, a pensive folk anthem. “It’s about the fear of things, nothing being enough. But seeing things from the outside, that feeling became about learning to love and accept the things I do have and to be excited about that, too.” Because as much as all this has been about chasing her dream, it’s also been about reminding herself that she’s got everything she needs.  Holy Grail LP Tracklist: 1. Intro 2. I Want 3. Amor 4. Party Tricks 5. Read Between 6. Hindsight 7. Look It Up 8. Only Want You 9. Fresh Start 10. What Do You Want Me To Say 11. Holy Grail 12. Parachute