Some artists make music that feels like it belongs somewhere between the world we spend most of our days occupying and somewhere that we can’t reach. I’m ridiculously biased in saying this, but Sofi Paez is one of those artists. Based in Berlin and hailing from Costa Rica, Sofi makes music that can make a piano feel alive, and her sophomore album, Bodies of Water, explores the emotions we attach to water: time, memory, stillness, storms, and everything in between.

But this conversation is about more than an album. Sofi is a dear friend whose openness, humour, and willingness to sit with whatever she’s feeling has had a profound impact on me. Like most episodes of the pod, we use her music as a way to discuss becoming more comfortable with oneself and the strange beauty of being alive.

A wonderfully unorthodox journey sits at the heart of Daughter of the King, the debut album from Australian-American singer-songwriter Grace Mitchell. Together we chat about leaving a major record label, moving from Los Angeles to Melbourne, and how Grace eventually found herself back to writing and recording on her own terms. We also get into the soul-searching behind these songs, the strange beauty of embracing uncertainty, and what happens when you stop hiding from yourself. Because while the journey to this record might sound anything but natural on paper, the honesty that runs through it feels like exactly where she needed to arrive.

The new King of the North is named Antony Szmierek, a true wordsmith in every sense of the word; you see he’s a poet that’s on a mission to make you dance. His music is this beautiful collision of joy, vulnerability and storytelling, with the dancefloor having morphed into a place for him to pour his heart out. After blowing me away with his debut album, Service Station at the End of the Universe, Antony is back with Decoding Birdsong, out August 21st, and somehow he’s managed to take things even further.

After getting to know each other over the past year or so, we finally sat down for a chat. Recorded the morning after his first New York show on a rooftop with a skyline view (here’s proof). Yeah, you can say this is a special one.