Isla Vista Worship is simply this: a family and collective of musicians, artists, and worshippers whose passion is to express their love and worship to King Jesus with a simple child-like faith and desire to see Heaven come to earth through creative expression. We live in Isla Vista, CA, a crazy college town right on the beach. Roughly 30,000 students, families and everyone in-between, live within one square mile. Isla Vista has always had a wild streak, and that culture has influenced the way we worship Jesus. We exist in this city to declare the goodness of God & the love he has for all of His kids through every tragedy and triumph. We’ve been writing songs, growing alongside our local church community and running after the heart of the Father for this city.

Zach Winters is a naturalist—his work and life often woven together. Winters’ songs resonate with the sacred and the commonplace—companionship, wrestling with the divine, passing seasons, and the pursuit of a tangible beauty. His music has more kinship to the poetry of Frost and Tagore than to his contemporaries.

His debut, A Long Intermission, was recorded simply in his bedroom and released in 2004 mostly to friends and family. But over the years, Winters has honed his songwriting and DIY approach, garnering praise from voices like Paste Magazine and self-producing five full-length albums as well as a handful of EPs and other projects.

Winters’ efforts have most recently culminated in a more luxuriant variety of indie-folk on his new crowd-funded record, To Have You Around. The 12-track album features everything from generous string arrangements to groovy bass lines to his first foray into horns, and most notably, Winters’ yearning, gentle, and sometimes playful vocal layering. Sweet companion, break bread with me / We’ve miles to go, let’s hold steady intones Winters in a refrain that’s equal parts affection and meditation. Songs like the title track “To Have You Around” and “Knock Kneed & Lead Lunged” find a comfortable place in the canon that is Winters’ brand of smooth, organic folk, while head-bobbing songs like “Love My Woman” and “If the Sun Is Shining” echo days of summer.

In the last few years, Winters has been on tour throughout the US, Canada, Australia & New Zealand, musically migrating with his family and playing shows with Josh Garrels, Johnnyswim, Holly Arrowsmith, A Boy & His Kite, Tow'rs, Will Reagan, Aaron Strumpel, & others. He has had the honor to sing for Syrian refugees, laboring mothers, orphans in Mexico, and his friends, neighbors and family.

Born on the Great Plains, Zach Winters and his family are currently living & working on a new album in southern Mexico.

Subscribe the Monthly EP and get access to 5 years worth of worship archives: https://goo.gl/IXHV4c

LOVKN is a singer-songwriter, rooted in indie-folk, pairing creative, dynamic melodies and lyrics influenced by the journey of life and faith.

Songwriter, producer and designer from Manchester, UK.

Julia Woods is following