Rachael Yamagata is proud to announce her first new studio album in almost ten years, Starlit Alchemy (pre-save), due out on October 3 via Jullian Records.
A fiercely independent artist with a voice both instantly recognizable and emotionally unflinching, Rachael Yamagata first emerged in the early 2000s with her critically acclaimed debut Happenstance. Over the next two decades, she built a loyal following on the strength of her raw, cinematic songwriting and soul-baring live performances—releasing a string of beloved records, including Elephants…Teeth Sinking Into Heart, Chesapeake, and Tightrope Walker.
Known for pairing bruising vulnerability with wry humor and unabashed grit, she has worked with artists as varied as Liz Phair, Toots and The Maytals, Ray LaMontagne, Ryan Adams, and Bright Eyes, all while consistently forging her own path outside the major-label system.
Now, she returns with her most intuitive yet intentional work to date. Starlit Alchemy isn’t a collection of singles or an algorithm-driven playlist; it’s a “deep dive record,” as Yamagata calls it—a body of work meant to be heard in full. “I always knew it was going to be a one-song-flows-into-the-next album,” she says. “The songs started as a compulsion to just express what I was going through and witnessing—only later did I realize the more cohesive story. It became a map made after the journey, not before. But it’s all in there.”
Rachael’s first single, “Birds,” is out now. One journalist describes the track as “a grief-soaked yet strangely buoyant meditation on signs, memory, and the metaphysical.” Inspired by the sudden appearance of birds crashing into her window—and written for a cousin mourning the long-ago loss of his mother—it’s a message song in disguise: lyrically light, emotionally direct, and threaded with hope. “The extra layers of loneliness that exist when you lose somebody and still have to experience the craziness of this world struck me. For me, the veil between what’s on the other side and what is here now is thin. It’s a reminder to watch for the signs from those who have passed—especially now, when the world’s gone crazy.”
The story of the album—one of personal loss and universal rediscovery—took shape slowly, over a few years of restructuring and creative risk. “It began as a stream-of-consciousness record, and I actually did the first demos as a mini-movie soundtrack played one after the other with linking interludes.” And though the themes are heavy, the experience is anything but.
Starlit Alchemy is not about bypassing pain, but about evolving through it. “It’s forensics for trauma and beauty, and the bittersweetness of the in-tandem nature of both. Fear, loss, and grief are major throughlines, but it’s the magic of what happens when you immerse yourself fully into the experience that begins the alchemy. The strength forms during the surrender, and what you once were is shed.”
As for what it sounds like, Yamagata can only say: “Perhaps think of Tom Waits as Willy Wonka and Rickie Lee Jones as Dorothy in a soundscape mentored by Hans Zimmer and Joni Mitchell—from her Both Sides Now album. None of which I’m well-versed in, by the way, so forgive any pretense.”
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