There’s music you hear and there’s music you see, the best kind achieves both. ISMAY creates intimate folk/Americana songs that transport you straight to the land where they were  written - deeply rooted in the heart of Sonoma Mountain. Melding the experience of taming wild horses, escaping wildfires, and birthing lambs with warm guitars and delicately graceful vocals, it is an original soundscape that is a delight to the ears as well as the imagination.

Driven by singer/songwriter Avery Hellman, ISMAY released their debut full length album Songs Of Sonoma Mountain in 2020, to widespread acclaim. It was named one of the 10 best Albums in the Bay Area and garnered features in American Songwriter, No Depression, Sonoma Magazine, and more. Blending field recordings and intricate melodies with live, guitar-based inventive composition, it is a proper introduction to the old-world charm of ISMAY. 

In March of 2023, Ismay was featured as one of a select group of artists from around the world participating in the Apple TV+ Show My Kind of Country, produced by Kacey Musgraves and Reese Witherspoon.

Hellman’s musical talent is no surprise, growing up backstage at their grandfather’s Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival, where they were inspired early on by artists such as Emmylou Harris, Gillian Welch, and Hazel Dickens. Since then, ISMAY has appeared throughout the West Coast at music festivals such as Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, Strawberry Music Festival, The National Cowboy Poetry Gathering, The Lantern Tour, and at renowned venues such as the Great American Music Hall, Slim’s, the Golden State Theater, and the Mystic Theater. They have opened for acclaimed artists including Steve Earle, Watchhouse (fka Mandolin Orange), Justin Townes Earle, Robert Earl Keen, John Doe, and Chuck Prophet.

hazelenglishmusic@gmail.com
Wake UP! is out now ✨ 
https://hazel-english.lnk.to/wakeup

Debbie Neigher’s career is marked by an inherent lust for joy. A sought-after keys player and vocalist, Neigher has toured with pop icons Demi Lovato and Marina, Grammy-winner Daya, and indie darlings Suki Waterhouse and Ezra Furman in addition to cultivating her project Lapel. Now, on her new EP Brutal Joy, Neigher blends her taste for pop catharsis with incisive self-reflection as she questions how to nurture and protect joy in the face of systems that seek to tear it away.

The kinetic pleasure of Brutal Joy is like a gasp for air after being held underwater—ecstatic, but not frivolous. This is hard-won joy, the thrill of arriving when you might not have. That grief and pleasure are so intertwined in these songs is a reflection of Neigher’s personal journey as a woman, activist, and artist, as well as the greater context in which the songs were made. Written and recorded in the arc surrounding the pandemic, Brutal Joy became a vehicle for Neigher to exercise her agency. Studying production and drum programming in between community organizing and solo living room dance parties to release the heaviness of her days, Neigher produced alongside Andrew Lappin (Anderson .Paak, Marina, L’Rain) and invited friends to record remotely.

The result is a collection of songs steeped with yearning for freedom as much as they effortlessly provide a sense of it. They remind us of our responsibility to preserve our own joy, and the bounty that awaits if we remain tender in the fight.

Discover and connect with new music from independent artists in your area.

Get the app at www.indieboard.co

"These are just the rules we live by now"

Indieboard is following