Whitney Ballen has two EPs to her name so far — 2014’s FALLS and last year’s Being Here Is Hard — and the Washington-based musician is releasing her debut full-length, You’re A Shooting Star, I’m A Sinking Ship, later this year. Her music evokes the the majestic beauty of the Pacific Northwest, an intense stillness broken up by the crashing of internal thoughts.

Through her early releases, she’s already cultivated a unique dynamic: shaggy instrumentals supporting Ballen’s very distinctive voice, which sits somewhere between a whisper and a yelp. That voice gets a lot of mileage, too, as evidenced by the lead single from her forthcoming debut. “Go” is jittery and nervous — it sounds like biting your nails and breaking the skin. Ballen’s words alternate between harsh directives and questions that feel just as final: “Go, forget my name and leave/ Why don’t you leave?”

“It is about telling people to leave when really, they’re already gone,” Ballen explains. “‘Go’ says all of the things we think about when we’re preemptively pushing someone who we love away so that it hurts less when they don’t stay. ‘Go, forget about me’ — it’s really the last thing you want them to do.” Listen below.

TRACKLIST:
01 “Everything”
02 “Go”
03 “Fucking”
04 “Mountain”
05 “Rainer”
06 “Black Cloud”
07 “Nothing”
08 “Moon”
09 “The Kiss”
10 “San Francisco”
11 “You’re A Shooting Star, I’m A Sinking Ship”
12 “Beyond Years”

You’re A Shooting Star, I’m A Sinking Ship is out 8/24 via Father/Daughter Records & Substitute Scene Records. Pre-order it here.

CREDIT: Sofia Lee