Molly Burch

With a smoky voice and an affection for the vocal era, girl groups, Brill Building pop, and later synth-polished '80s pop, Molly Burch is known for her yearning indie pop tunes. She encompassed infatuation, defiance, and despair on her 2017 debut, Please Be Mine. Inspired less by heartbreak and more by self-love, her third album, 2021's Romantic Images, embraced a more sparkling, pop-forward sound produced with members of Tennis. Inspired by her old diaries, 2023's Wild Nothing-produced Daydreamer continued in that vein but with an '80s pop sheen. Raised in Los Angeles by show business parents (her father was a writer/producer, her mother a casting director), Burch grew up on a diet of classic film musicals and vocal legends like Billie Holiday and Nina Simone and started singing as a preteen. She went on to study jazz vocal performance at the University of North Carolina at Asheville. After graduating, she relocated to Austin, Texas with a goal to write her own music and have a go at a music career. There, she reconnected with guitarist Dailey Toliver, whom she had met in college. They recorded most of her full-length debut at Dan Duszynski's studio in Dripping Springs, Texas in a single day, with minimal overdubs the following day. Captured Tracks released the album of reverb-washed love songs, Please Be Mine, the week of Valentine's Day 2017. She followed it in October 2018 with the equally stylized but more personal First Flower, which was recorded in Austin with Erik Wofford (Adam Torres, She Sir). Recorded by Jarvis Taveniere (Woods) and Will Patterson (Sleep Good), The Molly Burch Christmas Album offered a dozen holiday tunes, including two originals, in late 2019. Burch was touring with indie pop group Tennis in 2020 when she and her backing band (including Toliver) accepted an invitation to head directly from the tour to Tennis' base of Denver for recording sessions with members Alaina Moore and Patrick Riley. Helping Burch retool her sound to reflect a more confident mindset as well as a shared love of pop, the more synth- and dance-oriented Romantic Images arrived on Captured Tracks in mid-2021 and featured a collaboration with Wild Nothing. Burch soon visited her childhood home, where, during a cleaning project, she found her old diaries written when she was 13 (and younger) . Remembering her shyness, romantic longing, and body dysmorphia at that age -- which was also when she realized she could sing but needed cajoling to pursue it -- inspired the songs of her fourth LP, Daydreamer. It was produced by Wild Nothing's Jack Tatum. By the time of Daydreamer's arrival on Captured Tracks in September 2023, Burch had relocated from Austin to Los Angeles. The two cities marked the starting and ending dates, respectively, of her accompanying U.S. tour. In 2024, just as Burch was realizing she felt more stress than joy with the current realities of the music industry as an independent artist, she was dropped by her manager. She then amicably parted ways with her label and teamed up with visual artist Sascha Stannard to establish Picnic Studios, a nonprofit art space for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities. ~ Marcy Donelson, Rovi