Meels
In the fall, country singer-songwriter Meels shared her music video for “Willow Song,” a gentle but thought-provoking meditation on our relationship with nature. Though she wrote the song while in school at NYU’s Clive Davis Institute, it sounds like a long-lost folk tune that could have been recorded by the Carter Family. The video, with all the warm nostalgia of an old VHS tape found in your grandma’s attic, recalls variety shows like Hee Haw and The Muppet Show. “This video took me back to every Saturday night with my grandma back in the ’70s,” one YouTube commenter wrote. “I swear everything just stopped for a whole three minutes,” wrote another.
The video features Meels strumming the song while seated on a hollow log, a puppet racoon accompanying her on harmonica. The inspiration came from Meels and her boyfriend and creative director Henry Pakenham falling in love with old Hee Haw clips.
“We both just became really inspired by the idea of these live performances on the variety shows from the ’70s and the late ’60s,” Meels tells the Scene. “I’m a huge John Denver fan and a big Muppets fan. We were like, ‘It would be so cool if we continued this theme, creating the visual brand for this project by doing a bunch of different kinds of variety shows.’ [‘Willow Song’] was heavily inspired by John Denver on [The Muppet Show] doing ‘Garden Song’ and Linda Ronstadt doing ‘Blue Bayou.’ We just drew inspiration from those videos and got my dad to puppeteer the raccoon. [All my videos have] just been such a family affair.”
Meels released her second record, a seven-song EP titled Across the Raccoon Strait, Jan. 30 via Lost Highway. She describes her blend of folk, bluegrass and country as “critter country,” a nod to her appreciation for the natural world and her hometown of Mill Valley, Calif.
“I grew up in such a naturally beautiful place with millions of animals, so using animals as metaphors for my life just felt really natural,” she says. “Critter country was born through the way I was songwriting. It’s a homecoming in a lot of ways. I wrote most of these songs in my New York apartment in a state of yearning for home.”
The EP, which Meels produced alongside Peter Groenwald and Mark Campbell, isthe follow-up to her 2024 indie-folk LP Tales From a Bird’s Bedroom. She says the new record represents her finding a sound that’s truly her own.
“There are a lot of personal stories on this record, and it feels like it’s coming from a more confident place than the music I’ve put out in the past,” she says. “I finally feel like I’ve arrived at a genre that just fits really well with my voice and songwriting.”
The songs on Racoon Strait mark the arrival of a one-of-a-kind lyricist. The EP concludes with “Marsha June,” a tender tribute to her nonconformist grandmother. Another highlight is “The Wizard,” which once again deftly weaves metaphors about flora and critters to examine Meels’ experience with obsessive compulsive disorder. “My obsessive compulsive degree,” she sings as the beat bounces along, “Scratching and nagging at me / My mind is full of fleas.”
“I had a mentor in college that was amazing,” Meels recalls. “One day she told me, ‘Meels, I just love your songwriting because sometimes it feels like you’re writing happy songs about the end of the world, kind of how they do in fairy tales.’ That kind of struck me, and I didn’t really ever notice that I was doing that before. Sometimes when I’m writing, I’m like, ‘Oh, I’m doing it again.’”
Meels spent a portion of 2025 on the road supporting country champ Kaitlin Butts, and she has a string of shows coming up opening for Margo Price, Carter Faith and Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. Before all that, Meels will make her debut as a headliner at the Station Inn on Tuesday with banjo-and-marionette sensation Phoebe Sanders opening.
“I’m excited to play the EP in full and maybe sneak a few new songs in there too,” Meels says. “It feels like the perfect room to introduce the Meels show to the world.”
