Samia

On her third album Bloodless, Samia seeks comfort in absence.

“It’s easier to be what someone wants you to be if you give as little as possible,” she says. Drawing inspiration from unsolved mysteries – inexplicable cattle mutilations, the presence of God, the impossibility of femininity – Samia examines how shadows can loom larger than their source.

“I noticed a pattern in my life of wanting to live up to the person I became in someone’s head; you become a lot bigger with distance,” she reflects, exploring the allure of existing as a fantasy. Through haunting harmonies and spectral imagery, the album seeks a path through that space between void and flesh-and-blood presence. Samia would like to be both, to be whole, to be impossible.

She repeats that sentiment – “I want to be impossible” – throughout the chorus of Bloodless’ eerie opening track “Bovine Excision,” a song about a mysterious phenomenon involving the bloodless surgical removal of cattle organs. Her voice flows through the evocative lyrics with ease, weaving through the gentle strum of a lone acoustic guitar. The quiet intimacy builds into a storm of sound, culminating in Samia’s layered, ethereal harmonies that pierce with a haunting, macabre refrain: “And drained, drained bloodless.”

These emptied cattle evoke a grotesque vessel Samia unwittingly nurtured in an attempt to embody something both untouchable and on display, overflowing with infinite projections and capable of driving an unrelenting pursuit of the unattainable. Through sharp images—Diet Dr. Pepper and Raymond Carver as parallel pursuits of minimalism, white underwear and leeches, a Degas dancer poised at the bannister—Samia examines a paradoxical existence where merit transforms into a calculated act of extraction (“I felt the pea, can I eat it?”). This is just one strand Samia weaves into the intricate tapestry of Bloodless.

Samia’s 2020 debut album, The Baby, marked a confessional coming-of-age —an intimate love letter to those sentiments that are most difficult to articulate. In her 2023 album Honey, Samia deepens this exploration of young adulthood, offering a more introspective take as she searches for clarity. These releases, including her 2021 EP Scout, alongside her magnetic live performances, have earned her widespread critical acclaim, over 150 million streams, and a devoted fan base who sing along passionately to every word at sold-out shows. She’s also won over new audiences opening for artists like Maggie Rogers, Lucy Dacus, and Courtney Barnett.

For Bloodless, Samia reunited with producers Caleb Wright—of her favorite band, The Happy Children—and Jake Luppen of Hippo Campus, who also happens to be her neighbor in Minneapolis. She recently relocated there after a year in LA, three years in Nashville, and spending her teens and early 20s in New York City. Rounding out the team is Samia’s close friend and fellow artist Raffaella, who inspired the song “North Poles.” Together they’ve created a space where Samia can be both vulnerable and challenged.

Recorded in North Carolina and Minneapolis, Bloodless is a richly layered album that shifts seamlessly from sparse folk to sweeping indie-pop epics. Tracks like “Fair Game” explore the duality of oscillating between an idealized and demonized self; fantasizing about fully embodying either. “Sacred” uncovers someone’s capacity for love through their hatred.

“Hole in a Frame,” the album’s contemplative centerpiece, references a framed section of wall at a Tulsa venue where, in 1978, Sid Vicious punched a hole — the absence, that lack, absurdly glorified. “It’s easier to be an idea than a person,” Samia reflects. “Your distorted proxy protects you from stagnation. I find a certain logic in canonizing a void, and even more in trying to become one. It feels familiar, and comforting. Unlike the actual you, your lack only grows in value and mystery with time.”

On “Lizard,” with its bright, sing-song melody and teetering synths, Samia confesses, “It’s painful to stay present, to exist as a real, flesh-and-blood person at a party, after existing comfortably as a myth or a memory. And it was even more painful to try not to ruin a party I’d already ruined.”

“I’ve spent the past two decades unintentionally conflating an abstract idea of men with my understanding of God,” Samia explains. “The person I became in order to impress this imagined figure is inseparable from who I am today. With this album, I’ve tried to confront that head-on.” Bloodless explores her relationship with a fragmented, symbolic version of Men—a patchwork of expectations and imagined standards she tried to meet, which ultimately shaped her sense of self. “I suffer from decision paralysis,” she admits, “where I’ll mentally play out every possible choice and endure the consequences in my head. God and Men provide some aspect of relief here in that they will make choices for you. The great thing about God and my Figment Man is that I decide what either of them wants me to do. So, in this convoluted way, I still get to do what I want, while offloading the responsibility.”

“I wanted to stop punishing myself by denying that a significant part of my personality was built around traits and behaviors I believed—whether through observation or hearsay—men would like,” she explains. “I began to compare it to a relationship with God, where believers shape their entire lives around His commandments, even though they were never explicitly asked to do so.”

The album concludes with the shimmering and unconventional “Pants,” centered around the biting lyric: “Who was I when I bought these pants? / They’re non-refundable / Now I’m questioning everything I am.” The song delves into the endless, often fruitless search for a version of ourselves we believe once existed, only to realize that this “original” self was never a fixed identity. It’s a realization that can make us feel like strangers in our own lives, second-guessing even the smallest choices.

Across these thirteen songs, Samia grapples with the hollow form she once embodied—a vessel that gained value through its own absence, until playing dead became its own form of life. With Bloodless, she endeavors to unearth the self buried beneath these carefully constructed personas, ultimately reaching a place of acceptance for her whole, imperfect being.