Laura Veirs

• Singer/Songwriter

Laura Veirs returns with Temple Songs, her first album in four years—and the first she has written, recorded, arranged, produced, and performed entirely on her own. “I didn’t know if I would write songs again,” says Veirs, who spent the intervening years building a backyard studio, getting married, blending a family with four teenagers, deepening her visual art practice (painting), and expanding her music teaching. “Turns out that period was a gathering phase. When I made the commitment to recording the album myself, the muse caught me again and it came together very quickly.”

Written and recorded in three months in the fall of 2025 in Veirs’ backyard “Temple of Bloom” studio, Temple Songs marks a new level of artistic independence. While 2022’s Found Light (co-produced by Veirs and Shahzad Ismaily) was a declaration of autonomy, Temple Songs goes further: every creative decision—what to record, how to record it, and how it should sound—was Veirs’ alone. Made with just two mics and a laptop in a 10’ x 14′ room, the album feels unmistakably “Veirs-ian,” yet strikingly new.

Veirs embraced the Japanese concept of wabi-sabi throughout the process, choosing not to pitch-correct vocals or edit out rough edges. “I wanted to make something that sounds as organic and human as possible,” she says. Mixing by Philip Weinrobe (Adrienne Lenker) adds sympathetic finishing touches to Veirs’ 14th solo album.

Because the Temple of Bloom wasn’t built for recording, the studio itself became a collaborator. Veirs paused takes for rain on the skylight—or let it stay. She waited out neighbors’ conversations, raced to finish a sensitive vocal before a stump grinder roared to life, and included the presence of resident bluejays, passing crows, and other neighborhood sounds. These ambient intrusions lend the album an intimate, lived-in authenticity.

Influences range from Mac DeMarco’s commitment to trusting his personal taste to the anarchists and feminists of the late 1800s and their rallying cry, “no gods, no masters.” “It was hard to get the white man off my shoulder,” Veirs says. “I wrestled with a lot of doubt. But there were many happy accidents and eventually I found a flow—seeing the studio again, for the first time since my 20s, as a private place for exploration.”

Clocking in at a concise 30 minutes, Temple Songs’ 11 tracks capture a songwriter in peak form. The album is intimate, dreamy, brave and quietly defiant, built around Veirs’ intricate fingerstyle nylon-string guitar, vulnerable vocals, and bold electric guitar embellishments. “Arc Still Bends” reflects feelings of contemporary futility, offset by a hopeful chorus. “River’s Song,” an ode to one of Veirs’ children, showcases her gift for simplicity and emotional precision. “Pulse” veers into art-experimental territory, culminating in a cacophonous duet between electric guitar and sax. “No Masters” is a sparse, punk rock call for collective self-determination, while “Sunlight and Doom” incorporates elemental fragments from the ancient Greek lyricist Sappho.

Veirs played guitars, bass, drums, tambourine, percussion, and sings vocals; the only outside contribution is saxophone by a secret special guest. She used no click tracks and no electronic instruments, working by feel and intuition while watching bamboo sway outside her studio window. At 52, three decades into her career, Veirs reconnects with herself through a radically new process—one that feels both fresh and profoundly earned. She also designed the album’s calligraphy and paper-collage back cover art, extending the project’s handmade ethos.

“I needed to make this to connect more deeply with my taste, aesthetics, and confidence,” says Veirs. Longtime fans will recognize the core of Laura Veirs here—unfiltered and renewed—and new listeners will discover an artist fully inhabiting her creative powers.

Karl Blau

Karl Blau is an American indie rock and country vocalist, producer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist renowned for his prolific career spanning over three decades of recording and performance. Raised on Samish Island in Washington state within a musical family—his father a trumpeter and his mother a French hornist, and his three brothers brass players—Blau began recording music in 1993 and quickly emerged in the Pacific Northwest indie scene.

Blau’s early work included forming the band Captain Fathom and joining the group D+, followed by extensive touring as a multi-instrumentalist with artists like Laura Veirs in the 2000s and 2010s, contributing to albums such as her 2004 release Carbon Glacier. He has released numerous solo albums on labels including K Records and his Knw-Yr-Own collective, starting with Shell Collection (Knw-Yr-Own, 1997) and including notable titles like Nature’s Got Away (2008), Zebra (2012), Beneath Waves (K Records, 2006), and Vultures of Love (2024), often characterized by unconventional indie styles blending rock, punk, ambient, and folk influences recorded on four-track setups. As a producer, Blau has helmed projects for acts including LAKE, Your Heart Breaks, and Kimya Dawson through his Kelp! series (spanning 34 records) and work at Dub Narcotic Studio, while also launching the Anacortes Music Channel in 2015 and the Anacortes Music Project to support local artists.

In recent years, Blau relocated from Anacortes, Washington, to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he resides in the Germantown neighborhood with his family, continuing to create music that draws from his Northwest roots.His discography exceeds dozens of releases, available across platforms like Bandcamp and Spotify, and he remains an active performer and collaborator in the indie music community.