Stripmall Ballads

Stripmall Ballads is the haunted, dust-blown project of Phillips Saylor Wisor, a songwriter wandering the backroads between myth and memory. Drawing comparisons to Neil Young, Bonnie “Prince” Billy, and Maybelle Carter, his work lives in the tension between Appalachian tradition and modern disillusionment—aching with spectral beauty, dry wit, and a bone-deep sense of longing. From early lo-fi masterworks like Since Jimmy Died to the sparse, cinematic ache of Distant, his songs are slow-burning dispatches from the heart of a fractured America—where ghosts speak in minor chords and resistance sounds like a hymn. Stripmall Ballads doesn’t just sing about forgotten places—Phillips sings from them.