In Rotation: Cassandra Coleman

Growing up on a farm in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Tennessee, Cassandra Coleman spent her early years absorbing her mother’s folk records and her father’s soft rock tapes. Four years ago, she bared her soul on American Idol. Usually, the reality TV singing machine processes vocalists into highly polished, algorithm-friendly products. Coleman went back to the soil. Her debut single, “Coming of Age,” is a live-recorded confessional backed by Jack Antonoff and his band Bleachers. I’ll be honest with you—modern folk-pop usually puts me strictly to sleep. Too much of it functions as bloodless background noise for a gentrified coffee shop. Coleman actually has a pulse. When you listen to “Coming of Age,” you hear shimmering acoustic guitars layered over woozy, live-room drums. You can physically hear the room they recorded in. Antonoff is known for his massive pop anthems, but here he strips the paint off the walls to let Coleman's vocal texture drive the record. Discovering First Aid Kit at eighteen clearly cracked her writing open. She uses her voice as a warm, anchoring instrument that wraps around the gauzy strings rather than just floating disconnected above them. The industry is catching on to the authenticity. Her newest single “Maggie” taps directly into her rural roots and just landed on Spotify’s New Music Friday and #NowWatching playlists, right alongside her other recent drop, “Dying Star.” She is pulling real streaming numbers while keeping the acoustic dirt under her fingernails. The transition from a televised stage to cutting live tracks with Bleachers is a massive pivot, but it proves she knows exactly who she is as a songwriter. She’s taking this whole setup on the road this fall, hitting Oceans Calling in September before sliding down to Austin City Limits in October. If you want to hear what happens when a country-raised vocalist links up with pop’s most obsessive producer, this is the pocket. She found her lane. Hit play below.