Phoebe Bridgers holds the weight of the world in a voice that sounds almost weightless as she spins hushed, haunting indie folk and pop lullabies for the disenchanted. The L.A.-based singer-songwriter (born in 1994 in Pasadena) gravitated toward music at a young age, picking up the guitar at around 12 and discovering Elliott Smith—one of her biggest idols—at 13. She attended the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts, busked at the Pasadena Farmers Market, and found comfort onstage playing solo open-mic nights—as well as bass for punk band Sloppy Jane. By the time she reached her twenties, Bridgers had settled into her career, releasing her 2014 acoustic debut EP, Killer, before dropping some of indie music’s most devastating songs at a rapid pace ever since.

Her 2017 debut album, Stranger in the Alps, came as a soft, cathartic blow to the collective gut, highlighted by the fragile confession “Funeral” and bitter take-down “Motion Sickness.” On 2020’s Punisher, her sound is lusher, suppler, and laden with strings; her tone deadpan and death-obsessed, angelic and apocalyptic—often all at once. Her music may be heavy in introspection, but Bridgers thrives in collaborative settings, too. She’s a champion of her peers—founding indie label Saddest Factory Records—and has made some of her most striking work with a few of her favourite artists, including Conor Oberst for 2019’s hard-hitting Better Oblivion Community Center, SZA for 2022’s haunting “Ghost in the Machine”, and Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker in powerhouse trio boygenius.