Canadian indie-folk artist Cat Clyde has released the emotive new album single “I Feel It” which reveals her experience of being an empath. The song focuses mostly on the positive elements but also a little about the challenges, feeling relief and solace through connecting with nature. The evocative and haunting new track follows lead single “Mystic Light” and marks the first time Clyde has played piano on a recording. Her brand new studio album Down Rounder is due out February 17, 2023.

Work on Clyde’s follow-up to 2019’s spellbinding Hunters Trance began in her Quebec home studio in 2020, with plans to self-produce the record with her partner Strummer Jasson, in their cabin residence—recording was unexpectedly halted after an encroaching mold issue upended plans entirely. After moving out and returning back home, Clyde got in touch with producer Tony Berg (Phoebe Bridgers, Taylor Swift, Paul McCartney) whose schedule lined up with only a week’s notice in Los Angeles’ famed Sound City studios to lay down the entirety of Down Rounder in six days flat.

Like her “nature punk” contemporary Hurray for the Riff Raff, Clyde’s malleable singing voice—spanning an appealing twang to a lovely, plaintive croon—and contemplative, poetic lyricism espouse an essential connection between our spiritual center and the natural world that surrounds us. “Connecting with the natural environment around me inspired a lot of these songs, and sonically I feel like this record is very grounded as a result,” Clyde says while talking about the album’s thematic bend. “I wanted these songs to sound raw and rough, but also placed-together in a way that created—a simple beauty, like the changing seasons or a setting sun.” Keeping that bucolic perspective also drove the decision to include “I Feel It” and “The Gloom,” two songs whose recordings date back to the early Quebec sessions: “I wanted to still have that isolated perspective somewhere in the album, and those recordings still came together within the larger whole, too.”

Down Rounder is Clyde’s first proper solo album since 2019’s spellbinding Hunters Trance, but she’s also been plenty busy between now and then. In 2020, she released Good Bones, a set of acoustic reimagining from Hunters Trance as well as her 2017 debut Ivory Castanets; last year, Clyde joined up with fellow Canadian country singer-songwriter Jeremie Albino for the stellar collab LP Blue Blue Blue. She’s also racked up millions of streams across platforms, setting the stage for Down Rounder as her widest-reaching album yet.

Photo Courtesy: Strummer Jasson