Maria BC

When Maria BC is singing, they feel as though they’re dissolving and soaring, all at once. Hyaline, the title of their debut full-length album, describes something that is clear and translucent like glass, especially a smooth sea. For the Ohio-born, Oakland, CA-based artist, songwriting is a stretched blank canvas awaiting the strokes of an exhale, and it’s this slow-moving process that rewards us the ease of a crystalline sky, without forgetting the clouds that may have come before it. A knife's-edge balance of intimacy and ambiguity, Hyaline accesses snapshots of grief, anxiety and wonder through a miscellany of specters: these are ghost stories, but not as we know them.

Growing up, Maria BC often found solace in spending time alone. They learned how to entertain themselves creatively, and the childhood practice of songwriting still deeply affects how they associate with music today. “It makes me cherish and revel in moments of being totally alone,” they explain. It’s through this sustained, quiet process that they learned they could access characters, or certain selves, when singing. Through the lens of a character, there came a safety in exploring topics that may otherwise be too painful or humiliating. Here, Maria BC can name the grief that stands outside oneself, and in doing so, turns a haunted shadow into something more tactile.