SYML

SYML is the solo venture of Seattle artist Brian Fennell. Welsh for “simple”—

he makes music that taps into the instincts that drive us to places of

sanctuary, whether that be a place or a person.

Fennell’s latest offering, Nobody Lives Here, marks his clearest, crispest

writing. Written, recorded, and produced by him and his longtime collaborator

Brian Eichelberger, it is fueled by the keen understanding that life is a

contradiction, a fleeting moment. But as we accept the presence of loss, we

can still welcome others into our space with melody, lyrics, a slide guitar, or a

cello’s hum. His sense of humanity is his musical compass. As an artist,

Fennell takes license to both gut and be gutted. “If the dark inspires the good,

that’s a good thing to be honest about,” he says.

He released his self-titled debut album in 2019, which includes the multi-

platinum song “Where’s My Love” and the Gold Record fan favorite “Girl.” His

2023 sophomore album, The Day My Father Died, described by NPR as

“euphoric,” was recorded at Studio X with renowned producer Phil Ek and

features collaborations with Elbow’s Guy Garvey, Lucius, Sara Watkins of

Nickel Creek, and Charlotte Lawrence. His music has become the soundtrack

to countless films and TV shows and was used by Lana Del Rey on the song

“Paris, TX,” from her Grammy-nominated 2023 album.

With over four billion streams, the multi-platinum artist looks at grief, loss,

mortality, and the passing of time directly in the eye, unwavering and

harmonious.

In 2024, SYML launched the imprint, FIN. Recordings, a collaboratio

Katelyn Tarver

Singer/songwriter Katelyn Tarver is entirely unafraid to go deep on life’s most complex questions. On her forthcoming album, Quitter, due out February 9^th, 2024, the Los Angeles-based artist shares a lived-in and enthrallingly detailed account of navigating her early 30s, opening up about so many the troubles we typically keep hidden: imposter syndrome and struggles with self-worth, the fear of the unknown and anxiety of perfectionism, an all-too-familiar tension between craving acceptance and longing to pursue your absolute truth. Anchored in her crystalline voice and gorgeously airy indie-pop, the upcoming record ultimately creates space for listeners to ease into expansive self-reflection—and, in turn, possibly arrive at a more open-hearted and free-spirited perspective on their own journey through the world.

“There’s this idea that once you hit your 30s, you’ve accumulated all this knowledge from your 20s and you feel more grounded and settled in who you are. However, I feel like there’s so much I’m still learning,” says Tarver, a Georgia native who first broke through with her 2017 viral smash “You Don’t Know.” “Even though I didn’t realize it as I was writing, a lot of the songs on this album are asking questions about what matters to me and what I want from life. I don’t think I have all the answers yet, but I do feel like I’ve peeled back some of the layers and gotten closer to understanding who I am and why I do what I do.”

Her second full-length and first release for Nettwerk, Quitter marks the follow-up to Subject To Change—a 2021 LP that earned acclaim from major outlets like Rolling Stone, NPR, and SPIN. In creating her latest body of work, Tarver joined forces with producer Chad Copelin (LANY, Sasha Sloan) and esteemed co-writer Delacey (Halsey, Anne-Marie),carefully shaping a selection of songs that bring even greater candor to her unsparing introspection. On “Starting to Scare Me,” she shines a bright light on some of her darker impulses (envy, anger, the hunger for validation), spinning that self-revelation into sharply observed lyrics (“I live in a city where everybody’s a critic/I guess that it’s made me a little too analytical/I’m picking apart the things I actually like/’Cause I wish they were mine”). The moody but euphoric “Ignorance Is Bliss” explores her desire for control in a chaotic world, while “Parallel Universe” unfolds as a folky piece of storytelling about potential life paths that went unfollowed. And on “Cinematic,” Tarver fully surrenders to her starry-eyed tendencies, revealing the singular beauty of seeing the world through a sometimes-hazy point of view. “It’s about embracing sensitivity and sentimentality and seeing them as a strength, rather than something that makes life kind of achy,” she explains.

Also featuring standouts like the delicately soaring lead single “What Makes A Life Good?”—a track that strikes a potent balance of existential inquiry and tender confession—the album draws much of its power from Tarver’s willingness to show the messy and often-painful work of growth and transformation. “I can be pretty harsh and judgmental with myself when it comes to difficult or negative emotions—there’s a resistance to letting myself show that darker side that can sometimes flare up,” she says. “But I’m trying to accept all the parts of who I am, and one way of doing that is channeling some of those scarier feelings into songs. I think that’s a big part of the job of being an artist: looking under the rock and being honest about what you see there, so that hopefully someone else will hear it and connect with it and think, ‘Oh—I feel that way too.’”

True to that unflinching honesty, Tarver maintains a fierce refusal to offer up any tidy solutions on her forthcoming project. To that end, a sun-soaked and shimmering song called “Quitter” serves as the album’s most self-assured moment, even as Tarver expresses a glaring uncertainty about the road ahead. “‘Quitter’ is about wanting to stop living for other people’s expectations of me, or for my younger self’s expectations of what my life should be like now,” she says. “It’s about growing and changing, but in a way that’s celebrating it instead of being scared of what the change might bring. That’s really what I wanted this album to encapsulate as a whole: the idea that, yes, there’s a lot of heaviness that comes with trying to figure these things out, but letting go of all those expectations can shed some of that heaviness. It’s about tapping into the freedom that comes with saying, ‘I don’t have to abide by any of those old rules. I can make the rules up myself.’”