Jake Benjamin

When singer-songwriter Jake Benjamin was 12, he drew a rainbow on his face for Halloween and went to school. What felt innocent quickly became a humiliating lesson in being queer in the 2000s. Two decades later, Jake, now proudly queer and neurodivergent, found himself confronting a different kind of darkness within NYC’s queer community. While he experienced beauty and belonging, he also encountered ostracism, trauma, and disillusionment that ultimately sidelined him from music for two years. He returns with his sophomore album, crowned with cinders past, a 10-song journey through struggle, transformation, and self-affirmation. Raw and diary-like, the album blends indie-alternative musicality with expressive vocals and organic instrumentation, recalling the emotional expansiveness of Elliott Smith, Jeff Buckley, Radiohead, and Phoebe Bridgers. “I found an inner power through the trauma,” Jake says. “It’s ultimately a self-affirming album, but it goes through a hard path and a lot of struggles.” The album emerged after Jake stopped recording in 2024, feeling that the life he had built was dissolving. He took time to reflect on who he was after coming out and reconnect with his spirituality. From that process came the album’s central metaphor: a caterpillar-to-butterfly metamorphosis.