“Hamilton Pool” Details Alysia Kraft’s Unexpected Summer of Love

As winter slowly fades to spring, Alysia Kraft reminds listeners of those glistening moments of warmth and connection under the summer sun. Detailing that whimsical and freeing moment when love finds you, Kraft’s “Hamilton Pool” is a candid indie-pop reflection of the unexpected beauty of life. Released May 20, Kraft explains that the track is “about meeting Staci Foster, my partner for nine years and my musical collaborator in Whippoorwill.” Back in 2012, a friend recruited Foster to take Kraft out of the chaos of SXSW in order to explore the lesser-known parts of the city for a little while. “She picked me up and took me to the magic limestone grotto outside Austin that is Hamilton Pool,” she says. Arriving just 10 minutes before the natural area closed, the two decided to stake out their claim and hide while everyone else cleared out. “We had a magical 30 minutes or so of skinny dipping and basically falling in love until they found Staci’s truck in the parking lot and ultimately chased us out,” she explains.

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While their story of love is magical in itself, Kraft also finds a way to infuse the magic into the track. Utilizing retro elements in her instrumentation, the track feels like a soft vignette in which listeners can picture their connection forming like a romantic montage in their mind. “All my breath, all my breath gone,” she sings, “I saw you coming and I never want to see you go.” Kraft’s lyrics in this way are earnest and tender. Invoking warmth, there’s a feeling of both gratitude and longing for those moments in life which provide simple yet profound beauty. “This song is a light, sunny pop song about basically everything in the world fading out of focus besides the love you’re falling into.”

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Having amassed devoted regional followings for projects Whippoorwill and The Patti Fiasco as a celebrated songwriter and incomparably magnetic frontwoman, Kraft has sold out most of Colorado’s big stages and directly supported icons Bon Jovi, Blondie, Nathanial Rateliff and Bonnie Raitt on significantly bigger ones. Embracing the complexities of growing up queer on a cattle ranch in small-town Wyoming and choosing to love within a landscape that didn’t always love back, “First Light” is a triumphant homecoming and a defining solo debut. Smart, retro-influenced indie pop and lush, bioluminescent folk will find crossover appeal with fans of HAIM, Sheryl Crow, Sharon Van Etten, and Waxahatchee. Enlisting close collaborator J. Tom Hnatow & Grammy-nominated Justin Craig to produce and mix and acclaimed engineer, Sarah Register to master, “First Light” is open-hearted and thoughtfully hook-adorned– with soundscapes as dimensional as Kraft’s western upbringing and the liberated narratives contained therein.