On the deluxe version of their 2024 album Staring at the Sun, out on February 27th, Jade Ireland Long (piano, vocals) and Jess Thompson (guitar, vocals) pull back the curtain on the early years of the singular creative partnership that is the Athens-based band Hotel Fiction. Crystallizing the first phase of their music as they prepare to move into the next, their musical telepathy is on full display on the release. Across 14 tracks—including four new songs, which they dipped into their archives to find—the album ranges from nostalgic rock to intimate indie folk. The music has a theatrical bent in its ease of storytelling; Ireland and Thompson are troubadours traversing a range of sounds and stories as they relay the struggles of seeing friends move away, relationships, dopamine addictions, and heartbreak, while staying grounded by nature, which evokes a connection to something deeper, to something ancestral. It’s fitting that Staring At The Sun harkens back to Hotel Fiction’s roots, when the two started playing together in college, because the crux of the project is still and will always be their friendship. “We’re traveling on this journey together,” says Thompson. “We've always said we're soul sisters, but it does feel like that kind of different closeness that feels familial and deeper. We're always trying to deepen that connection and want to be a close part of each other's lives and create together.”