The first album in over six years from American songwriter Julie Byrne is a testament to patience and determination, the willingness to transform through the desolation of loss, the vitality of renewal, and the courage to rise, forever changed. For nearly a decade, Byrne has moved through the world as a characteristically private artist largely outside the public eye. A self-taught musician that has committed her life to her work, she now emerges from a deeply trying and generative period with the most powerful, lustrous, and life-affirming music of her career, The Greater Wings. While they hold the plasticity of grief and trauma, the songs are universally resonant, unbridled in their devotion and joy, held up by the love and alliance of a chosen family. Byrne leans further into atmospheres both expansive and intimate; the lush, evocative songcraft flows between her signature fingerpicked guitar, synthesizer, and a newly adopted piano, made wider by flourishes of harp and strings. It is the transcendent sound of resource, of friendship that was never without romance, of loyalty that burns from within like a heart on fire, and the life force summoned in unrepeatable moments — raw, gorgeous, and wild. The Greater Wings was written across several seasons, pulling imagery from nights on tour, periods of isolation, and the drives cross-country for its various collaborations between Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles. Recording started with the late Eric Littmann, her longtime creative partner and Not Even Happiness producer, and finished in the Catskills of New York with producer Alex Somers (Sigur Rós, Julianna Barwick). "My hope for The Greater Wings is that it lives as a love letter to my chosen family and as an expression of the depth of my commitment to our shared future. Being reshaped by grief also has me more aware of what death does not take from me. I commit that to heart, to words, to sound. Music is not bound to any kind of linear time, so in the capacity to record and speak to the future: this is what it felt like to me, when we were simultaneous, alive, occurring all at once. What it has felt like to go up against my edge and push, the love that has made it worth all this fight. These memories are my values, they belong with me." Julie Byrne will confess the success of her 2017 LP Not Even Happiness was unexpected; nine gracefully road-worn odes to the fringes of life she assembled without any expectation that they'd travel so far beyond their DIY origins. But its hushed closing track, "I Live Now As A Singer," did forecast an intention. She knew the open space — occupied by Littmann's signature palette of synth tones, Jake Falby's strings, and Byrne's robust, drifting voice — presented something new and thrilling, something they'd develop as a live band touring the world, and what would later be understood as the catalyst for material to come. From orchestral folk meditations (“The Greater Wings”, “Portrait of a Clear Day”) to windswept piano ballads (“Moonless”, “Death Is The Diamond”) to the luminous, synth-driven euphoria of “Summer Glass,” The Greater Wings builds on this revelatory space at every turn.

The music of Los Angeles-based multi-instrumentalist and composer Nailah Hunter opens gateways into magical worlds. Shimmering with dulcet harp tones and dreamy electronics, her debut EP Spells was released by LA’s acclaimed Leaving Records in May 2020 and described by Rolling Stone as “one of the best recent releases of its kind.”   Nailah was born in Manhattan and raised in LA - the daughter of a Belizean pastor - playing drums and acoustic guitar in her dad’s church band and singing in its choir. As a teenager, her growing interest in classical and jazz artists like Erik Satie, Alice Coltrane, and the soundtracks of Miyazaki films began to crystallise into the delicately ethereal musicality that led her to composing the songs on Spells.   A key turning point came aged 19, when she received a baby harp as a gift. She was already a student at CalArts, developing a keenly trained compositional sense and a perfectly smoky singing voice. Enchanted with her new instrument, she began creating radiant soundscapes, weaving together glittering harp melodies with field recordings, voice, and mystic imagery from the Tarot, Greek mythology, and Arthurian Legend. Her songs - like lush, fantasy landscapes or pools of moonlit water - are Edenic worlds, shining with transcendent wonder and healing energies.   Nailah hosts a monthly NTS radio show, Astral Garden, and has collaborated with Lyra Pramuk, No Joy, John Carroll Kirby and Bing and Ruth. She is also a member of New Age supergroup Galdre Visions along with Green-House, Yialmelic Frequencies and Ami Dang. In June 2020, she released the standalone single “Black Valhalla” to raise funds for the Loveland Foundation, a charity providing therapy to young black girls.