Indie-pop songwriter Shane Rennison’s Nice To Meet You EP (out October 13) is an earnest five-track collection of songs that feel like a peek into Rennison’s wide-open heart and his beloved home in the Catskill Mountains of New York. That’s where he made many of the memories that fuel his music, which recalls the craftsmanship of The 1975, the sugary synth highs of Passion Pit and the effortless pop prowess of Harry Styles.

“It’s just such a beautiful place. I can just take my guitar and go into the woods and hear nothing but birds,” Rennison said. “You can hear yourself think. You can feel yourself breathe. You’re more present. It’s home.”

Following singles “Cold Winter” and “Ghost,” Rennison has shared the latest single of the upcoming EP “Another Chance.” The single swirls poetically with undulating keyboard melodies and reggaeton rhythms while the lyrics laments for the one that got away.

Rennison says of the single, “‘Another Chance’ is very much about the one that got away. After an ex of mine got engaged, I started asking if I’d ever get another chance at love. The instrumentation is intentionally joyous and melancholic to show the emotional back and forth I experienced while writing the lyrics. 

This is the third song on the EP and for me it’s very much the center of the project, both literally and metaphorically. It bridges the first and second half by creating an ethereal medium that helps cleanse the palate with sugary synths. Lyrically, it is but one chapter in a 5 chapter story that makes up the EP. Each song on the EP reflects a specific moment in my life.”

Happy to be alive, and happy to be back in the Catskills, where Rennison grew up in a family with its own kettle corn business. He went to college in Florida but dropped out after studying abroad in Paris and realizing he was heading down the wrong path toward a career in business and finance.

“I stepped away from my reality at the time and just woke up every day in a foreign place and said, ‘What do I want to do today?’” he said. “And then I went and did it. And it showed me that that’s possible, and I started thinking, ‘Why can’t I do this back home? Why can’t I have this same energy and inspiration and fire back in the States?’ That set me on my way.”

Which leads us to Nice To Meet You and the follow-up full-length album, a release Rennison and Giaimo are working on now, with hopes for a 2024 release.

“The music we’re making is reflecting the work I’ve been putting in the past few years,”  Rennison said. “Because I’m self-taught and I haven’t been doing this that long, there’s just so much growth happening, and it’s really exciting to think about what the future holds. I feel like I’m still at the ground level of what I’m trying to do, so it’s all up from here.”

Photo Courtesy: Mike Bloom