SHEROES

A companion episode to Romy's recent visit to SHEROES during Pride Month on the heels of announcing her debut album Mid Air, Romy Madley Croft, who is best known as one-third of The xx, returns to SHEROES to celebrate the release of the album and reflect on the journey thus far as a solo artist with Carmel Holt.

Multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, and vocalist Grace Potter has been making records since she was nineteen years old. Two under her own name, then four more between 2005 and 2012 with her massively successful band Grace Potter & The Nocturnals. In 2015 she began releasing albums as a solo artist once more, but with a full band mentality. Her third outing following the Nocturnals chapter is called Mother Road - both a callout to what Steinbeck called Route 66, and the road she has taken as a mother. In this in depth interview, Grace sits down with host Carmel Holt to talk about the journey she has taken to arrive at her most fully realized project to date.

Montreal-born, Toronto-based artist and producer Debby Friday came up in the rave and club scene, and was a DJ before deciding she wanted to make music of her own. In five short years, Debby Friday has released two self-produced EP's, and co-produced her 2023 full length debut Good Luck, which is shortlisted for the Polaris Prize. Just a few weeks away from the award ceremony, host Carmel Holt sits down with Debby to discuss her journey thus far, and the new album.

Alicia Bognanno is a triple threat: artist, producer, and engineer. Recording and performing under the moniker Bully for the past decade, she has historically done everything herself. But her fourth album, Lucky For You, marks a new chapter in her career with lots of firsts - sharing production duties (with Nashville producer JT Daly), inviting an outside voice to sing on a couple tracks (Sophie Allison aka Soccer Mommy) - and with a supportive and trusted team of her management and label now in place, she is no longer carrying the weight of it all on her own. Alicia Bognanno sits down with host Carmel Holt to talk about how all of this led to making her best album to date, how sobriety has made her work more focused and present than ever, and the importance of her "whisper network" of female peers having each others backs.

Brandy Clark is an eleven-time Grammy-nominated songwriter and artist, who became a Tony Award-nominated Broadway composer earlier this year for the musical Shucked. Her recently released self-titled fourth album was produced by Brandi Carlile, and in a year that also marks the 10th anniversary of her debut 12 Stories, Brandy Clark reflects on the journey that led her to sharing her most vulnerable work to date.

SHEROES returned to Newport Folk Festival this year with special guest Neko Case, who just released the vinyl edition of her career-spanning retrospective, Wild Creatures, and discusses her many current writing projects : music for a Broadway musical, songs for a new album, a book, and her ongoing Substack, Entering The Lung. She and Carmel Holt also talk in depth about her relationship with her audience, the influence of the Indigo Girls, and the importance of queer/BIPOC/women's spaces. 

Thirty years into her illustrious career, which included pioneering the "folktronica" sound of her early albums in the mid 90's, Beth Orton released one of her best albums to date last year. She joins Carmel Holt to discuss the critically acclaimed Weather Alive, finding her agency in midlife as a producer, and how the success of her eighth album gave her hope.

Bethany Cosentino sat down with Carmel Holt back in May on the day her solo debut Natural Disaster was announced. It was her first interview about the SHERO's Journey that led to breaking away from Best Coast to record this album, and now that the album release day is finally here, you're invited to take a deep dive with Bethany and Carmel discussing the complexities of being a musician who wants to be a mom, the roots of Bethany's feminism, and finally finding confidence in her voice as a singer and solo artist.

A universally revered SHERO of indie rock, the Canadian singer-songwriter-guitarist-producer Feist joins Carmel Holt for a fascinating conversation about the intersection of her art, motherhood, grief, and recent experimentation with communal, interactive performance. The aptly titled sixth album and show, Multitudes, shows once again just how eternally artful and visionary Feist's work is, and reflective of the changing nature of time. 

Imposter syndrome is super common amongst womxn and nonbinary artists, especially when it comes to taking the reins in the recording studio. What we will learn today is that even when you grow up knowing that music is in your DNA and is a possible career path for you and/or your innate talent and passion gets you into one of the best music schools in the country, that doesn’t necessarily spare you from struggles with self confidence, or escaping the challenges of navigating music’s male dominated spaces and industry. Madison McFerrin was born in 1992, the daughter of Grammy-winning vocalist and songwriter Bobby McFerrin, and granddaughter of Robert McFerrin, Sr., the first black man to sing at the Metropolitan Opera. A graduate of Berklee College of Music, this singer, songwriter and producer first put out a pair of independently released, a-cappella-based EP’s called Finding Foundations Vol. I in 2016, Vol II in 2018, and then began to flesh out her sound on the 2019 EP You + I, a collaboration with her brother, musician/producer Taylor McFerrin. In today’s conversation, we’ll hear how Madison overcame her own imposter syndrome, took the production reins, and made her most fully realized album to date, I Hope You Can Forgive Me.