What’s in an album cover? Many artists use it as a medium in itself. Perhaps it is an opportunity to recreate the feelings that their music instills through a visual representation. Maybe it describes the location in which the compositions were conceived. It could be a self-portrait or even an intentional misdirect, an n-th generation Warhol photocopy distorted beyond recognition of its original visage. It’s a question I often pose to myself as I prepare to absorb the contents within. From the manner in which this release is packaged, what is this artist trying to tell me?
After a self-released LP—2020’s With You For Ever—and their 2022 debut with Born Losers Records, Closer Than We’ll Ever Know, Stray Fossa are back with yet another hard-hitting full-length, 2025’s Blossomer, this time set for release via Broken Palace Records. In 2021, two of the band’s members relocated to Munich, Germany, bringing the future logistics of the group into question. In what they’ve described as a homecoming of sorts, the songs that make up Blossomer were henceforth assembled and recorded in the summer of 2024 in members Nick and Will Evans’ Sewanee, Tennessee childhood home.
Knowing this brief history of Stray Fossa helps to piece together this new album as a whole. While Blossomer certainly sounds professional enough from a technical standpoint, the collection of songs contains a modest sort of warmth heard on many homegrown, DIY-stylized releases before it. For every chorused guitar line, synthesized jangle, and reverberated vocal, there’s a softly strummed acoustic guitar or dryly whacked snare drum adding earth and texture to the mix. It’s an impressive blend of sonics, falling somewhere between the icy mechanics of shoegazing post-punk and the breezy heat of surf-inflected indie rock.
I’ve deliberated over the album cover—designed meticulously by Mexican visual artist Melissa Santamaria—because I’m told that the members of Stray Fossa share a passion for photography, describing it as their “medium of choice to document change.” The cover itself is striking in its incredible detail, portraying a world of color, liveliness, lush foliage, and mountain peaks amidst the backdrop of the night. Certainly, photography references are present throughout Blossomer, most notably in the upbeat album opener and leading single “Change the Film.” The song details personal challenges and growing pains while suggesting the proverbial turning over of a new leaf. The journey throughout Blossomer plays like a short film in its own right, one track morphing into the next in a wash of sound or brief ambient passage. It’s telling that the closing track, “Still There,” goes on for about a minute before ending in studio chatter, the band briefly giving you a window into their homemade sanctuary before the music ends and the credits roll.
Written by Jacob Simons
