June Rosewell creates captivating music that evokes a sense of nostalgia, beautifully highlighting her sincere and open-hearted vulnerability. I met with the Nashville based artist at our favorite coffee shop, Portland Brew, to catch up and discuss her new EP. Here’s what she had to say:

I blend indie folk and indie rock, some of the songs are a little bit more folk-influenced and some are more rock-influenced. But I think they kind of draw from that touch-point between the two. This EP is also interesting because I kind of released things out of order. I felt like the songs that I put on the EP, I intentionally put them together because they felt more cohesive and they both felt like they were drawing from a similar well of sounds.

“A Solid State” is a pretty sad one, it’s about kind of just growing up and trying to find stability and not really knowing where to find that. I’m still trying to find this solid state where I can just feel comfortable and still, but I can’t ever reach it. I have that song like the first on the EP, partially because I think that that experience has kind of informed the way that I process a lot of other things moving through the world. I think, for that reason, I wanted it to be the initial song, and it also has the lyrics that are like the title of the EP. The title is “The Dog Bit At Such An Angle”. Some of that song is drawn from true events that happened and other aren’t. I didn’t actually get bit by a dog, but that line is more just about being kind of scared and trying to patch myself up when I felt really out of control in my life.

“Glass” was a song that I kind of wrote without any real meaning behind it originally. I didn’t write it about anything in particular, and it took me a while to kind of realize what the meaning of the song was. The words just kind of like came to me. This one is also kind of about fear, so I put it after “A Solid State” for that reason because I think it’s about kind of trying to find acceptance from others, but also from yourself and how scary that can feel. It can kind of feel like an uphill battle. It’s definitely the angstiest and rockiest song on the EP as well. It felt like a good shift from the ebb and flow and soft feel of a solid state.

“Medicine” is about my mom being really ill when I was a kid. At one point my mom was in the hospital for like a few weeks and I didn’t think she would be okay. She has an auto-immune disease and was sick an awful lot when I was growing up. The song is just about her being sick and how scary that was for me. I’ve also been a hypochondriac for a very long time and I think it kind of drew from a lot of those experiences of like wondering if my mom was going to be okay. I would have to calm myself down and I think that song also is kind of about that process. Of having to calm myself down and find that stability for myself, which is echoed in A Solid State. I actually recorded it in one night, my friend Lee and I went and had margaritas at Cilantro Mexican Grill in East. I wanted to show him the song but we got our a microphone and stuff. We later tried, and it just wasn’t working for me. So, I ended up just releasing the original demo that we had recorded that night when we were just like drunk and like messing around. It feels very raw and special to me for that reason.

“Apartment” was a lot of fun because I actually intentionally stepped out of my typical writing style with this one. I wrote it from someone else’s perspective when I usually use first-person perspective when I’m in songs. I wrote it with my friend, Nick Jude, he had the instrumentals already laid out. He asked if I’d be interested in co-writing this one, and I loved it. I felt like I really wanted to make sure to capture whatever emotion he feeling when he wrote the original chord progression so that I could have some cohesiveness between the music and lyrics. He suggested that I write it about being a villain, like being evil, and that kind of perspective. I wrote it from the perspective of someone who treated me like shit. It also allowed me to like, process that emotion.

“Cosmos” is a love song, but it’s also kind of not a love song. When I wrote it I was like, this is such a sweet love song, but I think it’s also about kind of like letting someone overpower you and like letting someone control you. It’s about this love feeling cosmic and how special that is and how immense that is. But it’s also kind of about how I’m letting something else and someone else overpower and determine me in the way that planets can pull each other. Like how the earth pulls the moon. I think this is my favorite song off the EP, personally, I really love it.

I think with this EP I’ve like actually found my sound and developed that sound. I love to genre bend, so I think my sound will continue to kind of shift and change, but with this, it really feels cohesive. All of the songs feel truly meaningful and special and I feel like I put the time into them that I needed to put into them

June Roswell is on Instagram. Stream the EP below: