Alela Diane is a Portland, Oregon-based singer/songwriter who has been creating warm, beautiful indie-folk songs since the early 2000s.
Today, she released a new song titled “Howling Wind” which marks the first song she’s released since her 2018 album Cusp.
“We’ve all been through so much these past few years,” she said in a statement. “May this song be a balm for those who need it.”
Watch “Howling Wind” by Alela Diane
Cusp, written during a retreat in a small A-frame cabin deep within the snowy woods Oregon shortly after the birth of her first child, was Diane’s fifth album where she reflected on the new emotions of motherhood. She recorded the songs while pregnant with her second child.
Last year, she announced a collection of new songs and launched a Patreon page to help support a finished album and give her fans a glimpse into her creative process along the way.
“The landscape of the music industry has changed drastically since I began recording music 15 years ago,” Diane said recently. “My first albums were made of hand-stitched brown paper bags and lace, I sold them for $10 at small house concerts, and shared songs on MySpace.”
“After many years of touring, and recording/releasing music in the traditional sense, we’ve arrived in a world where music is free for the taking,” she said.
“Supporting the artists you love here on Patreon, will allow us to continue making the music you love to hear on your favorite streaming platforms.”
Raised in Nevada City, a small boom-and-bust town California town tucked away in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains with a population of under 3,000 at the time, Diane quickly realized it would be impossible to pursue music without leaving home.
“I knew I had to be in a city in order to do music; I didn’t want to live in San Francisco again, and L.A. was out. So Portland seemed like the next best option,” she said.
But it was her formative years in Nevada City that shaped her musical foundations.
“Pretty much every morning, my parents would sing together in the kitchen,” she said. “When I was really young, they’d do traditional bluegrass songs together; they both played in a number of bands around town, hit the local folk festivals.”
For the last few years during the pandemic, Diane has been compiling an album while preforming at home concerts and covid benefits.
“Howling Wind was born of the great reckoning we’ve been living through these past few years,” she said. “I wrote Howling Wind for anyone who needs a song about that right now.”
