girlpuppy is aglow

The 25-year-old Georgia native, better known as girlpuppy, has sustained devastating heartbreak, periods of great change, and the ever-nagging question: “What on earth am I going to do with my life?” Through it all, her journals of lyrics, woodsy recording sessions, and the sacred act of pouring her heart into music have kept her grounded. This month, Harvey will release her second record, Sweetness, a testament to strength, acceptance, and picking up the pieces.

Harvey calls me from her Atlanta home on a lazy Thursday afternoon. Her grey knit cardigan matches her over-the-ear headphones, bleach-blonde hair hugging her shoulders. Harvey’s bedroom feels just as warm and inviting as she is – blue and white toile-printed bedding, lacey curtains hanging over her windows, and floating shelves adorned with trinkets. Today has been slow for her so far, sleeping in and cleaning the kitchen.

We rewind to Harvey’s earliest memories of being fascinated by music. Her dad loved radio country and her mum loved Fleetwood Mac and Norah Jones. However, Harvey discovered her affinity for singing with her older brother Ben. She recalls the two dancing around the house, playing mini Hilary Duff discs from their HitClips. Instead of Guitar Hero and Rock Band, they stuck to SingStar – an early 2000s karaoke-based video game. “I was bad at Guitar Hero and I was bad at Rock Band, but I ate SingStar every time,” she laughs.

“Since I was little, I’ve had a music writing journal,” Harvey says. “I had a page in my high school journal [titled] ‘songs I would put in a song if I could make one.’ Honestly, I could’ve just called it poetry at that point [instead of] lyrics to songs that don’t exist.” At this time, her dreams of being a musician felt frivolous and out of reach. In 2017, Harvey released her first song on SoundCloud under the girlpuppy moniker. “I think I fully scrubbed it from SoundCloud… it was really, really bad,” she says. I promise her I won’t look for it.

Three years later, Harvey took her first real steps toward becoming a full-time musician. After a failed few days of college and a brief stint in background acting, girlpuppy was born. “I was in lockdown with my boyfriend at the time who was a producer,” she says, “so I was able to beg him, like, ‘Hey, we’re both jobless. Please give me your time and make a song with me.’ Then [we] made ‘For You’, and after that, it was history.”

In girlpuppy’s early years, Harvey drew inspiration from the artists she loved in high school: Lana Del Rey, Grimes, and Charli xcx. “I deserve a badge of honour at this point,” she says. “I’ve been listening to Charli since, like, 2013.” Along with the rest of us former melodramatic teenagers, Harvey found comfort in the music of Elliot Smith, Beach House, Daniel Johnston, and Thom Yorke – who she admittedly discovered through the Twilight: New Moon soundtrack.

Harvey released her first record, When I’m Alone, in October of 2022. “That was my first time making a big piece of music,” she says. “It was fun to think about ‘who’s gonna produce it?’ ‘where am I going to make it?’” As a long-time Alex G fan, Harvey landed on his guitarist, Sam Acchione, as her producer of choice. After meeting at Riot Fest in 2021, Acchione invited Harvey to visit his studio in Philadelphia. “I went to Philly to see [his] studio and get a little feel, but it was way too cold,” she laughs. “It was in a warehouse, so there wasn’t any central heating. The only heat we had was from the itty bitty space heater.”

She vetoed the frigid warehouse in Philly and settled on a cabin in the woods of Thornhill, Tennessee. There, she spent 20 days in creative isolation with Acchione, Henry Stoehr of Slow Pulp, and her ex, “who shall not be named.” “I had only written a couple songs before we went to the cabin, so I wrote pretty much every song there,” Harvey says. During this time, her chief musical influences were Grizzly Bear, The Shins, and ironically, Bon Iver – an artist intimately familiar with recording music deep in the woods.

When I’m Alone is folksy and moody, a reflection of Harvey’s physical surroundings in Thornhill. “We were there in February, so it was cold and brown and everything was dead,” she says. “I was pulling from such a sad place.”

Harvey completed her debut in February 2022, catalysing a year of dramatic change. Between February and October, she spent a month on tour with Matt Maltese, started an LLC, signed to a new label, and experienced the most heart-wrenching breakup of her life. “It was like, ‘Boom! Boom! Boom!’” she recalls. girlpuppy was coming to life, but Harvey was shattered. It was time to envision her music without her ex’s “heavy footed” influence.

In January 2023, Harvey started writing for Sweetness. The first song she wrote, “For You Two”, is a direct response to the first song she produced with her ex. “For You Two” is airy and cathartic, grappling between nostalgia and anger. “If I don’t say it out loud / It’s like it never happened,” she confesses between verses.

Harvey spent the year writing and recording demos with her new band members, “sweet angels” Tom Sinclair and Holden Fincher. “We made, like, four or five demos just at Tom’s house,” she says. “I remember in one of the early demos, you can hear his roommate cooking in the background. We were very much slumming it.” After back-to-back tours with Hovvdy and Haley Blais and a headlining stretch around Europe, girlpuppy signed with Captured Tracks in November 2023. With the support of her label and a newfound creative network, Harvey could make Sweetness exactly how she wanted to.

“I’m a huge fan of MJ Lenderman and Indigo DeSouza and Wednesday, and so I’ve been a huge fan of Alex Farrar’s work,” she says. “I told my manager, ‘I want to make this record with Alex. I don’t know how it’s gonna happen. I don’t know anybody that knows him… I don’t know how to make this connection happen, but I need it.’”

A few months later, Farrar messaged her on Instagram and invited her to record with him at his studio in Asheville, North Carolina, which she describes as a “dream-come-true moment.” Harvey visited Asheville three times for days-long intensive recording sessions. “In the middle of the UK tour, we spent three days in Asheville working with Alex,” she says. “Then, I came back months later and did four more days, and then came back four months later and did five days. It was all very, very spaced out.”

Sweetness is Harvey’s most personal piece of work yet. She describes the magic of feeling in charge of its production – exchanging references with Farrar, finding inspiration in new places, and adjusting to spending time alone in the studio. “I’m really proud of Sweetness because it feels so me. It actually feels like the stuff that I love – drawing from my direct influences and not anyone else’s.”

Harvey’s favourite song on the record is the fifth track, “Windows”, one of the first songs she wrote after her breakup. The song is a journey, building vocally and instrumentally from an easy bedroom-pop sound to full-fledged indie rock. “When I first wrote this song, I wanted [it] to sound like a song you can lay in,” she says. “I wanted it to be soft but also cinematic and big but understated at the same time.”

In early demos, Harvey and Sinclair wanted “Windows” to sound as “field-noisy as possible,” drawing influence from Yo La Tengo. “We wanted to sound like we just made it in one take,” she says. The final product is whimsical and melodic, evoking a Faye Webster or Samia feel. While recording, Harvey invited drummer Madden Klass to play on the track. “Madden came by and just knocked it out of the park [on the] first take,” she says. “She brought sheet music with her… I didn’t even know they had sheet music for drummers!”

The bridge of “Windows” is Harvey’s favourite part of the record: “You are my silver spring / No matter what you do, you will always hear me sing.” She shares an anecdote about this subtle nod to the Fleetwood Mac cut. After Harvey sings this lyric, Sinclair implements a piano sequence from her favourite moment of the original song to emphasise the reference. “Alex was like, ‘I don’t think anybody is thinking about that piano part as much as they’re thinking about everything else in that song,’” Harvey recalls. “But I love that it’s your favourite, and for that reason, we should use it.” She reminisces on hearing the song for the first time and being moved to tears. “When we first heard it, Tom said, ‘This is the most girlpuppy song of all time. You can hear all the music you love in this one song.’”

Another Sweetness leading single, “I Just Do!”, chronicles a later stage in mourning a relationship: looking for somebody new. Harvey wrote this song after spending six days pursuing an ill-fated situationship in Los Angeles. “I was immediately head over heels for him, although I knew he was emotionally unavailable,” she says. “I knew that it was going to end in flames, but I did it anyway because I’m a Pisces, and I lead with my heart instead of my brain.”

“I Just Do!” is honest and raw, mimicking a familiar 2000s alt-rock sound and enunciation. “Think I’m a masochist / I know you can hurt me / And I’m letting you / ‘Cause I like you / I just do,” Harvey reveals over slashing guitar. The quirky music video for “I Just Do!”, inspired by the Twilight movies, portrays Harvey as a vampire and her love interest as a vampire hunter, raising suspicion at a party with a “Wanted” poster and a piñata filled with bulbs of garlic. She praises director Trent Wayne for uncovering the layers of her disappointing week in LA with a campy twist.

After completing production, Harvey took the reins on building a creative world for Sweetness. “The very first idea I had for visuals for the record was this picture of a kitten that was standing on stairs [and] completely backlit… in the way that you couldn’t really make out anything except for the shape of the cat and its fur. And I was really inspired by that for some reason.” This image directly inspired the cover art: Harvey, clad in white linen, contrasting a dimly lit beach landscape.

“It was very dark outside when we ended up shooting the album cover, which was not intentional,” Harvey says. Photographer Tonje Thilesen suggested shooting at night to cast a brighter light on Harvey, simulating an angelic, glowing look. Ultimately, the light among darkness became a thematic representation of the record. “There’s all of this dark shit that happened, but I feel brighter and lighter because I’m out of it now,” she says. “The sweetness of the record, I feel, is me.”

On her sophomore record Sweetness, Becca Harvey is back in control. In the last three years, she has grieved, healed, and transformed into a new, more assured, version of herself. Now, she can relish in the light – the sweetness – at the end of the tunnel.