Snowfall Suite by Indie Darling

Indie Darling is the musical project of Michigan-based pianist, singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Luke LaBenne. Luke began releasing music as Indie Darling 2019 but he has been writing his own songs for nearly 20 years.

The Snowfall Suite EP was written in the thick of a Michigan winter in 2021. Luke composed these songs while his cats sat in the window watching the wild weather outside. The deluge of snow provided a thematic parallel to the mounting pressure of his day job that would go on to consume him, leading to a disconnection from his music and a period of deep depression.

The longer he neglected his creative outlets the worse things became, leading to intense feelings of insecurity and self-loathing. This continued for much of 2022 even as Luke began attending therapy. In the fall of 2022, Luke revived his long-dormant Indie Darling accounts and started posting cover videos. The support and recognition he received from his followers online gave him new inspiration and began the first step in his recovery.

In winter 2022, after one of the toughest year’s of his life Luke sat down to record the compositions he’d written the year prior. Now that Luke has found a way through the snow storm he enjoys spending time at home with his wife, Kyle and his two cats, Nico and Annie (Nico is the subject of the EP’s artwork and both cats appear in the music video). He still regularly attends therapy and encourages others to seek help.

Luke can now look back with clarity and answer the question that he poses in the song, “The lyric is ‘Please show me a secret or formula for keeping my head above’ and that’s the tricky thing, there is no formula. There is no easy answer, there is no hack. Life is hard and you keep going. That’s enough. Finding a reason (any reason) to keep going is the answer.”

The musical project of Michigan-based pianist, singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Luke LaBenne. Debut album Entertain out now.

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