Today twenty-one year old Pasadena-based artist Charlie Hickey announces his debut EP. Produced, mixed, engineered by Marshall Vore, Count The Stairs will be self-released on February 26th. Following Hickey’s 2020 single “No Good At Lying,” the second track off of the EP is the captivating “Ten Feet Tall,” the first song Vore and Hickey ever wrote together and features the duo’s friend and collaborator Phoebe Bridgers on backing vocals. Check out the song and video directed by Zoe Donahoe and Adam Sputh.

“‘Ten Feet Tall’ is sort of a different animal than any other song I’ve written,” Charlie Hickey explains. “I was going to school at the time and was feeling quite alienated in this little world where everybody was instantly partying with their brand new best friends and fun came so naturally. I found solace in Marshall’s studio on the weekends.  This was our first proper attempt at writing together and we were writing something really horrible. We were both kind of delirious and Marshall started singing the verse melody for the song as a joke, making fun of what we had been trying to write. But when I heard it, I said to him, “Wait, that’s the song that we’ve been trying to write.” After that, we wrote the rest that night and recorded it the next day. We re-recorded it a few times before going back to what we did that day. I’ve never written or recorded a song like that since, and we weren’t sure it was even gonna come out but when I hear it back, it really serves as a time capsule of a very confusing/depressing but also very fruitful and fun time in my life! “

Born in 1999, Charlie Hickey grew up in South Pasadena, just minutes from Downtown Los Angeles. Raised by two singer-songwriter parents, Charlie’s second language was music from day one. As early as grade school, he was making sense of the world through songwriting, and by middle school he was writing, recording and performing songs that attracted a community of collaborators and could silence a room. 

A turning point for Charlie came at around the age of thirteen, when he covered a song by then up-and-coming artist Phoebe Bridgers, who was still in high school herself.  The two quickly became friends and collaborators, setting Charlie on an exciting new musical path.  Years later, Bridgers introduced Charlie to songwriter, drummer, producer and her bandmate Marshall Vore, who noticed something special about Charlie. The two began writing and recording songs together, and soon Charlie dropped out of school to work on his music full-time. 

Count The Stairs is a slow, quiet, and understated peek to the world of Charlie Hickey, who is barely of legal drinking age, but taps into such universal themes that showcase a wisdom beyond his years and exudes promise for what’s to come.