Meels has a name for what she makes, and it’s not the kind you can file neatly into a playlist category. She calls it “critter country,” or “folk country critter songs,” a phrase that sounds playful until you listen closely and realize the whimsy is only on the surface level.
“At my core, I use animals as metaphors for what’s going on in my life,” Meels explained during a recent 1824 press conference ahead of her new EP “Across the Raccoon Strait,” out January 30. “I think those metaphors just feel really natural to me.”
That naturalness comes from a life living in the kind of imagery most songwriters have to borrow. Meels grew up in Northern California, surrounded by redwoods, creeks, and what sounds like an entire zoo’s worth of creatures. “I grew up with, like, a million animals,” she said early in the call. “Growing up in the redwood trees, playing in the creek … I think that’s just where all of my nature inspiration comes from.”
But the defining tension inside “Across the Raccoon Strait” is not just nature versus city. It is the tug of a home state identity against the hard, fast adulthood of New York. Meels studied at NYU, and the city shaped her in ways that show up in her writing’s sharper edges. “Going to college in New York was definitely like, you’re just kind of thrown into the deep end,” she said. “There’s no campus. You’re just like, city living. So that definitely made me grow up really fast.”
Still, she keeps circling back to Northern California as her creative compass. “My Northern California self, that’s always the one that’s going to be tugging at my sleeve creatively,” she said. “It’s the version of myself that I’ll always return to.”
That push and pull is basically the emotional engine of the EP. Asked what first sparked the project and why the songs belong together, Meels traced it back to one feeling: wanting out. Or rather, wanting to return to her roots.
“The emotional starting point was my eagerness and my longing to move back to California,” she said. “I ended up writing most of the songs that are on the record just like in my New York apartment. I was itching to get out west.”
For all the nature imagery, Meels’ writing is not escapist. It is often heavy material delivered with a grin. When asked how she balances that tone, she credited advice from a mentor that reframed her entire approach.
“In college, I had a mentor … and she once told me that my songwriting was kind of like writing happy about the end of the world, kind of how they do in fairy tales,” Meels said. “Sometimes when I’m writing a song, I come back to that comment and continue to do that, because it makes harder topics feel more digestible for the audience, and more fun and more digestible for me.”
That idea of “digestible” came up again and again, not as a dilution, but as a way of surviving what she is writing about. The clearest example is “The Wizard,” a song Meels confirmed is about her lifelong struggles with OCD. “It was a very therapeutic song for me to write,” she said. “It allowed me to write about my OCD in a way that was fun and digestible … it made it easier for me to work through those issues.”
In her live shows, she has started naming that directly, even when the room is not always ready for it. “At all my shows I’m like, ‘This is the deal with the song, I wrote it about my struggles with OCD,’” she said. “It’s really important for me to bring it up … just to make people feel less alone.”
Even her favorite lyric on the new project carries that mix of humor and weight. She pointed to a line from “Vultures” that makes her laugh every time she sings it: “I’d be doing jail time if it’s a crime to be small and alive.” The origin is as Meels as it gets, both tender and absurd. “I was thinking about like a fly being hit by my car,” she said. “It’s silly, but it also brings me into the story.”
The more she spoke, the clearer it became that Meels treats songwriting like an act of discovery. She compared it to therapy, where the meaning arrives later, after the words are already out in the world.
“When you’re talking to your therapist … you don’t really know what the true meaning is until it’s dictated back to you,” she said. “I write … and then once I’ve been playing [the songs] for a while, I sit with it, and I’m like, ‘Oh, I understand more deeply what I was trying to convey.’”
That sense of arrival is part of what distinguishes “Across the Raccoon Strait” from her debut “Tales from a Bird’s Bedroom.” Meels spoke with obvious fondness for that first record, but also a sense that she was still auditioning versions of herself. “When I made ‘Tales’ I had just graduated college,” she said. “I chose a crop of my best songs from college … but I wasn’t, I hadn’t really arrived yet to the sound that felt really true to me.”
Now, she says she is landing somewhere more certain. “This EP lives in a more confident space,” Meels said. “With this record, I finally feel like I’ve landed in a genre that feels so perfect for me.”
That confidence extends beyond the music into the world she is building around it. Meels spoke about filming a series of performances in Glacier National Park and her desire to highlight and protect public land. “I feel really passionately about protecting our national parks,” she said. “It’s really important to me, especially because I grew up with redwoods right in my backyard.”
Even the visuals for the project are rooted in craft, not aesthetic shortcuts. Her creative director, Henry Pakenham, described the concept behind the “Willow Song” video as a love letter to 1970s television performance, pulling inspiration from vintage broadcast shows and classic clips like John Denver. “That’s what makes it look really authentic,” he said. “A lot of people think that it’s AI or something, which it’s the complete opposite.”
“It was a serious family affair,” Meels added, laughing. “My dad was actually the puppeteer.”
That detail, silly on the surface, is the perfect summary of her entire ethos. Meels makes folk music where the critters carry the hard feelings. She makes the darkness singable. She turns longing into a train horn and a chorus you can’t shake.
And if you needed a final hint at where she thinks this is going, she offered one without blinking. “I’m so excited about 2026,” Meels said. “I feel like it’s going to be such a special year.”
Featured Photo Credit: Jim Hughes
Nathan Smith is a Providence-based music photographer and journalist focusing on capturing the special moments and unfiltered magic of live performances. Whether he’s shooting established artists at sold-out TD Garden shows or documenting the rise of emerging local bands, his goal is the same: to pull viewers directly into the heart of the moment.
His writing spotlights rising artists and local scenes, with a focus on telling the stories that often get overlooked. A lifelong music fan and musician himself, Nathan approaches interviews and portraits as conversations rather than transactions, building trust with artists so their genuine personalities can shine through. Whether he’s backstage, in the photo pit, or at home in front of the keyboard, he brings the same curiosity and care to every assignment.
Outside of his press work with Juice Box Press, Nathan works regularly as a photographer with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, as well as numerous bands in the Boston and Providence area. Nathan also plays violin with a local orchestra, follows Celtics basketball almost religiously, and is an avid fantasy reader.