On her expansive second album, the Appalachian-born songwriter folds bluegrass, psychedelia, indie rock, gothic country, movement, mythology, and the natural world into a record about refusing the identities other people hand you.
There is a difference between being shaped by a place and being trapped inside somebody else’s idea of it.
Angela Autumn knows that difference intimately.
Raised along the mountains of western Pennsylvania and now based in Nashville, Autumn has spent years carrying Appalachia into her music: through clawhammer banjo, mountain-song phrasing, agricultural imagery, rivers, forests, foothills, and an instinctive relationship with landscape.
But belonging to a tradition does not mean surrendering to its boundaries.
“I did the bluegrass thing for a while,” she says. “I was obsessed with Tony Rice and the whole tradition.”
Eventually, however, the expectations surrounding that tradition began to feel narrower than the person making the music.
“The scene never quite knew what to do with a radical who didn’t fit neatly into its nostalgic box.”
That sentence provides an unusually clear entry point into Autumn’s second album, Believer.
The record carries Appalachian music inside it, but it refuses to behave like an artifact.
Instead, Autumn drags her roots through indie rock, psychedelia, pop, gothic country, experimental production, dance, spirituality, environmental anxiety, heartbreak, folklore, and whatever else has accumulated inside her.
The result is not an escape from Appalachia.
It is an argument that Appalachia was never as aesthetically narrow as outsiders—or traditionalists—sometimes wanted it to be.
“The real power of being from Appalachia is that the ethos never leaves you,” Autumn explains, “but that doesn’t mean I’m doomed to live behind a retro lens for eternity.”
She is not interested in authenticity as confinement.
She is interested in what happens when tradition is allowed to evolve with the person carrying it.
Roots Without the Retro Lens
Autumn has lived inside multiple musical identities.
Bluegrass devotee.
Raver.
Former ska kid.
Clubgoer.
Singer-songwriter.
Folklorist.
Experimentalist.
Those selves do not always fit the simplified mythology surrounding roots music.
That is precisely why they belong together.
“My personality never fit like a glove because of all the unintegrated parts: the lover of raves, the kid in a ska band, the one in the club.”
Believer attempts that integration.
Its musical world is deliberately porous.
Mountain music meets studio experimentation.
Acoustic traditions collide with psychedelic atmosphere.
Country sensibility coexists with pop instinct.
Bodies move.
Guitars blur.
Old imagery lives beside contemporary desire.
Autumn is not trying to prove that Appalachian music can be modern.
That framing would already concede too much.
She is simply making modern music as an Appalachian artist.
“I am a dreamer, a part of pop culture, and an artist who refuses to be shrunk to fit someone else’s definition of roots.”
That resistance feels central to Believer.
Roots become foundation rather than perimeter.
The Mountains Stay in the Body
Autumn has been nicknamed “The Rose of Appalachia,” a reference to both her Allegheny roots and clawhammer banjo playing. Her music has long carried the geography of western Pennsylvania, filtering mountain streams, rolling foothills, and the texture of the region into songs that increasingly refuse genre purity.
But place is not merely aesthetic for Autumn.
It changes how she understands beauty.
She grew up in a steel town in the Rust Belt.
That means beauty can look like a river running past industry.
A gully.
Concrete.
Rust.
Weather.
Infrastructure.
The residue of labor.
“I am from a steel town in the rust belt and inherently see rivers, gullies, industrialism as beauty.”
Her relationship with landscape became even more explicit after visiting Ghost Ranch, the New Mexico home associated with Georgia O’Keeffe.
Autumn found herself thinking about what it means to look at the same mountains repeatedly as light, weather, and seasons alter them.
“We can never underestimate how landscapes inspire us or change our inner world.”
It makes sense, then, that much of Believer emerged outside conventional songwriting rooms.
The album’s material took shape in the woods of Tennessee, a rural treehouse near Asheville, and a warehouse in Chattanooga where Autumn slept on a concrete floor and wrote during the day. She has described deliberately placing herself in extreme or isolated environments to write, saying that without the earth she likely would not have music at all.
For Autumn, retreat is not escapism.
It is confrontation.
Going Somewhere Remote to Meet Yourself
When asked what happens when she removes herself from everyday noise, Autumn describes a process that is almost ritualistic.
“I just station myself in a remote place and start writing.”
But isolation alone is not enough.
“The way this works must be from the intention to reach a sort of inner conclusion, and one must be willing to self-speculate.”
Self-speculate is a revealing phrase.
Not self-analyze.
Not self-improve.
Speculate.
To write this way means entering solitude without assuming you already understand the person who entered it.
A forest becomes less a source of inspiration than an environment where the usual distractions disappear.
Then the questions get louder.
Who am I without routine?
Without audience?
Without somebody else telling me who I am?
What am I actually trying to become?
The songs arrive somewhere inside that uncertainty.
“Heavy Tobacco” and the Spirit of the Plant
One of Believer’s most evocative songs, “Heavy Tobacco,” began casually.
Autumn was sitting on the back porch of her home with a friend, smoking rolled cigarettes.
Then a phrase appeared:
“Heavy tobacco chasing me down.”
Her friend contributed another:
“No more money, no more pain.”
What begins in physical reality quickly expands into something spiritual, ecological, and economic.
“I attribute a lot of it to the spirit of the plant.”
That idea becomes particularly potent when Autumn connects tobacco to agriculture.
The plant carries history.
Labor.
Addiction.
Commerce.
Ritual.
Pleasure.
Exploitation.
Land.
Money.
Death.
The contradictions are almost endless.
Autumn uses that density to think about ambition and consumption on a wider scale.
“Coming from an agricultural lens, we need to accept that if we, as a society, pursue greed at all costs, all of our resources will be depleted.”
The line between personal appetite and societal appetite becomes deliberately unstable.
A cigarette can become a miniature image of extraction.
Take.
Consume.
Repeat.
Until something is gone.
“I wish more people would honor life and mother nature while we have it.”
That concern with nature is not an accessory to Autumn’s songwriting.
It is part of her moral imagination.
Mythology Makes Heartbreak Less Boring
Autumn often moves beyond literal autobiography into folklore, spirituality, and invented symbolism.
Part of the reason is almost comically practical.
If she told every emotional story directly, she says, they would all start sounding the same.
“I left my heart in a place in someone’s hands and then I was sad.”
Again.
And again.
“And it’s just a boring, over and over, repeating tale.”
Myth gives pain somewhere else to go.
A breakup can become landscape.
Loss can become ritual.
Desire can become a creature.
Ambition becomes tobacco.
Fear becomes a biblical image.
Emotional reality stays intact while the narrative around it becomes larger.
For Autumn, that expansion also creates the possibility of liberation.
“There has to be some liberation, real or imagined.”
That final distinction matters.
Real or imagined.
Art does not necessarily have to solve the situation that created it.
Sometimes imagining yourself outside defeat is already meaningful.
“Nothing is worse than remaining defeated, in my opinion.”
Mythology becomes a survival technology.
A Record Made After the World Fell Apart
Believer itself emerged from heartbreak.
Autumn has described making the record in the aftermath of a breakup, during what she calls “a dark time.” Music became part of how she learned to imagine a brighter future again.
The title therefore carries more weight than simple optimism.
Belief is not presented as naïveté.
It arrives after disappointment.
After somebody leaves.
After the future you imagined no longer exists.
In retrospect, Autumn can even locate gratitude inside the rupture.
She has said she is now thankful for the person who broke her heart because their departure gave her the space to dedicate herself fully to Believer.
That does not romanticize heartbreak.
It recognizes transformation.
Loss alters the conditions of a life.
Sometimes destructively.
Sometimes unexpectedly productively.
Often both.
Believer lives inside that contradiction.
You Do Not Have to Stay One Person
The album’s genre fluidity mirrors that emotional transformation.
Autumn calls the record a melting pot.
But when asked whether she intentionally set out to challenge expectations around what Appalachian music can sound like, her answer is almost less ideological than expected.
“When you track just rhythm section and the singer-songwriter, I think you get ‘singer-songwriter’ plus an entire palette of the artist’s, producer’s, and other musician’s taste.”
In other words, hybridity happens naturally when everyone in the room is allowed to bring their whole musical life with them.
Producer and multi-instrumentalist Isaiah Beard, aka Baerd, was essential to that process.
The two had already collaborated on “Electric Lizard,” whose mixture of indie textures and abstract Americana helped push Autumn toward a more boundary-blurring sound. On Believer, they expanded that experimentation through stacked guitars, doubled vocals, strings, keyboards, cello, fiddle, and clouds of reverb.
The studio becomes another place where identity can expand.
Not:
What genre should we make?
But:
What happens if all of our tastes are allowed in the room?
Attitude as Expansion
Autumn has said she wanted Believer to carry “more attitude.”
Part of that came from thinking about the people around her.
Dancers.
Strippers.
Body workers.
Friends who experience music physically.
She wanted to make songs they could move to.
That impulse creates another productive contradiction.
Appalachian music is often discussed through preservation, heritage, storytelling, virtuosity, lineage.
Autumn also wants to ask:
Can somebody dance to it?
Movement does not cheapen tradition.
It gives the music another body.
That philosophy extends into her visual work.
The Body Becomes Another Instrument
Autumn choreographs and records herself dancing.
The practice grew partly through observation.
Her former roommate Isabella would post videos moving through the woods.
Her friend Madeline treated movement similarly, as an ordinary part of life.
Local dancers such as Kristen Carrera became sources of inspiration.
Eventually Autumn began filming herself.
“When I dance to my own music and the music of others, I feel better than I ever have.”
That answer is striking because it avoids the language of branding altogether.
The dancing is not simply content.
Not visual strategy.
Not an aesthetic extension designed to optimize the rollout.
It feels good.
And that physical joy inevitably becomes part of the art.
For an artist whose songwriting spends so much time in introspection, mythology, environmental anxiety, heartbreak, and existential questioning, dance offers another mode of knowledge.
The body can arrive somewhere before the mind does.
The Grulke Prize and the Alternate Timeline
Recognition arrived at a particularly strange moment.
Autumn received the SXSW Developing Artist Grulke Prize, joining a lineage of recipients that has included artists such as Leon Bridges, HAIM, Anderson .Paak, and Future Islands.
The timing was almost absurd.
“The Grulke Prize, oh boy… definitely an affirmation of my path.”
Because shortly before the news arrived, Autumn had been seriously reconsidering whether music could provide a sustainable future.
“I was so close to creating an OnlyFans account.”
She knew creators who had been able to purchase land through the platform.
Meanwhile, music did not necessarily appear capable of providing comparable stability.
“I was like, ‘I just don’t see this being lucrative.’”
Then the next day came the message that SXSW had awarded her developing-artist support.
“It was a huge help and honor.”
The story is funny.
It is also an unusually candid picture of what artistic careers actually look like.
Prestige and precarity can exist simultaneously.
Critical acclaim does not automatically pay rent.
An emerging artist can receive career-defining recognition while still wondering whether the economics of continuing make any sense.
The prize did not manufacture Autumn’s confidence.
It arrived as evidence that continuing might not be irrational after all.
What Do Artists Get Back?
That economic reality appears again when Autumn considers legacy.
“At this point in my career, I am only beginning to see the effects of my music on people’s lives.”
That awareness changes the equation.
Songs leave the artist.
Other people attach memories to them.
A private experience becomes somebody else’s soundtrack.
The work begins returning in forms the artist cannot predict.
“I realize we get back what we put into this career as an artist.”
But her answer quickly expands beyond her own career.
“If anything, I hope society begins to reward honest hardworking people, because it’s usually the same people who give back their entire lives.”
Legacy, in this formulation, is not just catalog.
It is an ethical question.
What kinds of labor does society value?
Who gets supported?
Who spends decades giving without ever receiving proportional stability in return?
Autumn’s answer sits somewhere between hope and indictment.
Nostalgia Without Captivity
At the end of Believer, Autumn hopes listeners experience something surprisingly simple.
Connection.
To themselves.
To the natural world.
To sound.
And perhaps to memory.
“I hope to leave listeners with a satisfying auditory experience, and that the songs feel nostalgic to them.”
Again, nostalgia appears.
But this is not the nostalgia Autumn rejected earlier.
The distinction is crucial.
She does not want to be confined inside somebody else’s nostalgic idea of Appalachia.
But she is perfectly comfortable creating music that eventually becomes nostalgic for somebody else.
That is a beautiful paradox.
Nostalgia is oppressive when it demands that an artist imitate history.
It becomes powerful when a new song enters somebody’s life deeply enough to become part of their own history.
One freezes the past.
The other creates future memories.
Believer wants the latter.
In Conversation With Angela Autumn
MUNDANE: Believer feels like an album rooted equally in tradition and transformation. As someone deeply connected to Appalachian music while embracing indie, psychedelia, and gothic country, how do you honor your roots without letting them define your limits?
ANGELA AUTUMN: I did the bluegrass thing for a while—I was obsessed with Tony Rice and the whole tradition. But the scene never quite knew what to do with a radical who didn’t fit neatly into its nostalgic box.
My personality never fit like a glove because of all the unintegrated parts: the lover of raves, the kid in a ska band, the one in the club.
The real power of being from Appalachia is that the ethos never leaves you, but that doesn’t mean I’m doomed to live behind a retro lens for eternity.
I am a dreamer, a part of pop culture, and an artist who refuses to be shrunk to fit someone else’s definition of roots.
MUNDANE: “Heavy Tobacco” uses tobacco as both a spiritual symbol and a metaphor for ambition, addiction, and legacy. What drew you to that imagery, and why did it feel like the right lens to explore those bigger questions?
ANGELA AUTUMN: The song started on the back porch of my home with a friend of mine. I was smoking a ton of rolled cigarettes, so it just came out naturally: “heavy tobacco chasing me down.”
I was singing to him and making up the words as I went, and he said, “no more money, no more pain,” and I attribute a lot of it to the spirit of the plant.
Coming from an agricultural lens, we need to accept that if we, as a society, pursue greed at all costs, all of our resources will be depleted.
I wish more people would honor life and Mother Nature while we have it.
MUNDANE: Your songs often blur the line between folklore, spirituality, and personal autobiography. Do you think mythology helps us tell emotional truths that straightforward storytelling sometimes can’t?
ANGELA AUTUMN: For me, every story would sound the same: “I left my heart in a place in someone’s hands and then I was sad.”
It’s just a boring, over-and-over repeating tale.
There has to be some liberation, real or imagined.
Nothing is worse than remaining defeated, in my opinion.
MUNDANE: Much of Believer was written outdoors—in forests, treehouses, and remote creative spaces. How does removing yourself from the noise of everyday life change the way songs arrive?
ANGELA AUTUMN: Yes, getting away definitely helps.
I just station myself in a remote place and start writing.
The way this works must be from the intention to reach a sort of inner conclusion, and one must be willing to self-speculate.
MUNDANE: You describe the album as a musical melting pot, bringing together mountain music, indie rock, psychedelia, and pop. Were you intentionally challenging people’s expectations of what Appalachian music can sound like?
ANGELA AUTUMN: When you track just rhythm section and the singer-songwriter, I think you get “singer-songwriter” plus an entire palette of the artist’s, producer’s, and other musicians’ taste.
MUNDANE: Winning the SXSW Grulke Prize placed you alongside artists who went on to define entire eras of music. Has that recognition changed your confidence, or has it simply reaffirmed that you’re on the right path?
ANGELA AUTUMN: The Grulke Prize, oh boy… definitely an affirmation of my path.
I was so close to creating an OnlyFans account. I was like, “I just don’t see this being lucrative,” and I knew some creators who had purchased land from it.
The next day we got the message that I had been awarded a grant from SXSW for Developing Artist.
It was a huge help and honor.
Austin has provided so much support for musicians in general.
MUNDANE: There’s a recurring conversation throughout your music about legacy—what we leave behind, what we carry forward, and what we choose to let go of. At this stage in your career, what kind of legacy are you hoping to build?
ANGELA AUTUMN: At this point in my career, I am only beginning to see the effects of my music on people’s lives.
I realize we get back what we put into this career as an artist.
If anything, I hope society begins to reward honest hardworking people, because it’s usually the same people who give back their entire lives.
MUNDANE: Your self-choreographed visuals feel just as intentional as your songwriting, almost like another chapter of the story. How important are movement and visual storytelling in expressing emotions that music alone can’t fully capture?
ANGELA AUTUMN: I began recording myself dancing because of my former roommate, Isabella, who would post videos of herself moving through the woods.
My friend Madeline did the same as part of her everyday life, and local dancers like Kristen Carrera inspired me deeply.
When I dance to my own music and the music of others, I feel better than I ever have.
MUNDANE: Whether you’re singing about nature, spirituality, or identity, your work always feels deeply connected to place. Do you believe landscapes shape artists as much as the people around them do?
ANGELA AUTUMN: Absolutely.
I visited Ghost Ranch—Georgia O’Keeffe’s home—this past year, and all day she looked upon these mountains, painted by the sunrise, sunset, storms, and seasons.
I am from a steel town in the Rust Belt and inherently see rivers, gullies, and industrialism as beauty.
We can never underestimate how landscapes inspire us or change our inner world.
It makes sense that they would impact artists.
MUNDANE: Believer invites listeners to embrace contradiction, growth, and transformation without offering simple answers. If someone finishes this album feeling a little more connected to themselves—or to the natural world around them—would that be the greatest success the record could have?
ANGELA AUTUMN: Definitely.
In addition, I hope to leave listeners with a satisfying auditory experience, and that the songs feel nostalgic to them.
The Freedom to Contradict Yourself
Perhaps the most compelling thing about Believer is that Angela Autumn never resolves its contradictions.
She does not need to.
She is Appalachian and contemporary.
Traditional and experimental.
Spiritual and skeptical.
Rooted and restless.
A songwriter who retreats into forests and a person who loves clubs.
A banjo player shaped by bluegrass and an artist who refuses to spend her life reenacting its past.
Someone deeply concerned with legacy who is still actively becoming.
That last contradiction may matter most.
Artists are constantly encouraged to become legible.
Pick the genre.
Define the aesthetic.
Tell the audience who you are.
Repeat until recognizable.
But recognition can become its own kind of confinement.
Autumn seems more interested in another possibility:
What if identity is allowed to remain unfinished?
What if tradition is not something you faithfully reproduce but something alive enough to survive your contradictions?
What if the kid in the ska band, the bluegrass obsessive, the raver, the woman dancing through the woods, the Rust Belt daughter, the Appalachian folklorist, and the experimental songwriter are not competing identities?
What if they were always the same artist?
Believer does not abandon Angela Autumn’s roots.
It reveals how much those roots were capable of growing into.
And perhaps that is the most Appalachian thing about it.
Not preservation for preservation’s sake.
Not nostalgia as obligation.
But adaptation.
Resourcefulness.
Improvisation.
Knowing the land you came from deeply enough that you no longer need anyone else to tell you what belonging to it is supposed to sound like.
