Today, Siichaq — the project of the Atlanta-based musician Kennie Mason, and also her native Inuit name — independently shares her new album CATCHER. Awash in blown-out despondence and frayed nerves, it’s a ruggedly honest set that calls upon a flourishing musical community — including members of Lunar Vacation, The Slaps, and Faye Webster’s band — to help bring its bleakly beautiful world to life. Siichaq will also be hitting an East Coast tour this fall, details below.  Listen to CATCHER here.

Of CATCHER, Siichaq says, “It was the most profound learning experience that I’ve had since I started making music. It taught me about the art of recording, but also, and maybe more importantly, about the spirit of music in general. I was guided by the most passionate, thoughtful, patient, and talented people that I know. Their unconditional love for the process modeled a kind of ‘surrender to the evolution’ attitude that I admire profoundly. It was a labor of love on all fronts, and it’s always nerve wracking to send something so personal out into the void. But I couldn’t be grateful for the experience of making CATCHER and I just hope that anyone who listens finds something meaningful to them within it.”

Siichaq also today shares the video for “I Keep Getting Sicker,” premiered earlier this week on Under The Radar, and directed by the artist herself. Currently studying literature and screenwriting, bringing ideas to life on screen and through visuals comes as second nature as the songwriting itself.

Watch “I Keep Getting Sicker” here

Across the record you get a vastness of sound: “Project 3” creates a grungy, deep, droning, murky shoegaze/slacker rock world that proves to be perfect for introducing such an introspective, autobiographical album in CATCHER. Lush strings by Annie Leeth soar on “Life’s A Mess,” while “Horse & The Heretic” provides an interlude of noise rock, which sits comfortably next to golden two-tone harmonies sung about the pleasures of being alone on “A Couple Bad People.” Groovy pop melodies on  “Cannibal” compliment the bare bones banjo on “World Equestrian Center.”

CATCHER features former idols and current friends Rand Kelly (The Slaps), Maggie Geeslin, Ben Wulkan, Connor Dowd, and Matteo Delurgio (all of Lunar Vacation), Annie Leeth (Faye Webster), and Evan Dangerfield (Finn Wolfhard). Siichaq’s style in sound brought to life by a web of wildly talented artists, yet rooted wholeheartedly in its own dreamy world, painted with brush strokes that seem so effortlessly placed, as it often happens when something’s created from a place of necessity.

There is nothing contrived here – just a bleeding display of things that needed to be written down and orchestrated. The Cliff Notes: Mason grew up in North Florida as the only native person, or even person of color, to note. At twelve years old, she was placed in a correctional wilderness program after a hired consultant warned her parents that it was the only way to keep her around long term. For six or so weeks, she fended for herself in the forest in the rain, cold, and darkness. After that, Mason always found herself making friends with older folks; her soul much older than her physical being, which had always placed her at odds in her environment, anyway. Just a few years ago, around the age of 20, a friend lent her a copy of Catcher in the Rye, which lent a hand in the titling of the album.

CATCHER brings to mind The Microphones blown out despondency and julie’s gothy bluntness, giving glimpses of gloom and darkness that stem from deep within Mason”s psyche; things you’d never pick up on if you meet her in person. Cheery, chipper, a little bit flitting not unlike a hummingbird searching for sugar, Mason moves through the world as a beacon of positivity and empathy in spite of (or perhaps in reaction to) what she carries, and she’ll be carrying that weight, beauty, and depth to some exciting places in the months to come.