Billie Marten, Núria Graham

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Frances Carter

Billie Marten on a couch.

Billie Marten

media release: British singer-songwriter Billie Marten releases the new single, “Clover,” from her forthcoming album, Dog Eared, out July 18th via Fiction Records and announces a fall North American headline tour. Following “Swing”, “Crown”, “Feeling,” and “Leap Year,”“Clover” is a beautifully crafted, playful tune built of contradictions and oxymorons. It’s another telling example of Billie’s prowess to step left-of-center from the box marked ‘folk’ and into somewhere more lucid, where the likes of Feist or Lucy Dacus currently operate.

Billie says “Clover” is “a song about feeling small but needing to appear big. It’s a note on power and inequality. Most of this record talks about age and experience and relevance, something that’s clogged my mind since I began music. I carry a lot of premature worry with me, and that’s something that comes from starting an adult life as a teenager I suppose. I gained the human affliction of inventing things before they happen. I’m a multitude of anxieties.”  

Billie Marten headed to New York in the summer of 2024 to record with producer Phil Weinrobe (Adrianne Lenker, Buck Meek, Laura Veirs) at his Sugar Mountain studio, alongside an all-star cast of musicians. The likes of Catalan singer-songwriter/guitarist Núria Graham, bassist Josh Crumbly, virtuosic guitarist Mike Haldeman, multi-instrumentalist Shahzad Ismaily, revered indie-rock musician Sam Evian, former Dirty Projectors vocalist/folk musician Maia Friedman, Brazilian percussionist Mauro Refosco, drummer/multi-instrumentalist Vishal Nayak, keys/synth player Michael Coleman, and acclaimed folk musician Sam Amidon sprinkle their gold dust over Dog Eared.

Since the release of Billie’s fourth LP, 2023’s Drop Cherries, she has largely spent her time on the road, honing her craft as a deeply instinctual artist and songwriter. Living and learning. Playing and writing. Collaborating with gifted strangers. Exploring questions of identity and self. All the while, sending demos and voice-notes across the Atlantic to Weinrobe and watching those embryonic songs come to life and flourish fully-realised in the studio.

Dog Eared is a warm, rich and textured record that bristles with confidence and self-belief, with Billie already approaching the prolificacy of a “lifer” with so much life left to live. It’s a left turn from her previous recordings, albeit a subtle one, taken with a deftness of touch. A musician embracing change, while staying true to her core self. There’s a certain strength of conviction here that finds its voice more prominently in the extensive pool of her acclaimed American contemporaries, of which she now surely stands shoulder to shoulder with. With Dog Eared, Billie calmly posits herself at the top of the tree of not just British contemporary folk artists, but with British songwriters at large.

Following a lengthy run of shows supporting Tennis across North America, the newly announced dates will see Billie return to the US and Canada in September for a headline stint and is pleased to announce another 10-date headline run in November. Núria Graham will support on select North American dates.