Rosier are interesting for reasons that have very little to do with the usual indie-folk tag. The Montreal group don’t treat tradition as something to faithfully preserve, or dress up in for atmosphere. They go digging instead. Old songbooks, field recordings, fragments of lyric, half-buried melodic shapes — that’s where the writing starts.
What comes out the other side isn’t revivalism so much as a kind of reassembly, where historical text gets stretched until it starts speaking in a different voice.
That approach sits at the centre of “Plus d’amis”, Rosier’s new single, out February 13 and taken from the forthcoming deluxe edition of “Elle veille encore”. Sung entirely in French and featuring Safia Nolin, the track grows from archival stories about the fear of losing a mother. The source is old. The feeling isn’t.
Béatrix says archival research has become the starting point of her writing. She goes back to folk songbooks, old records, and archival recordings, looking for fragments of text and melody that have survived across generations. Having grown up around the folk traditions of Quebec and New England, she doesn’t see folk as something to imitate or wear for effect, but as an active process — one that lets her break old forms apart and reshape them into something new. As she puts it, “Maybe I’ll take two lines of a 200-year-old lyric and use them as a loop, or I’ll take a melodic contour and stretch it until it feels like something modern and ambient.”
What draws her in is also the freedom that comes with working that way. Because the words are not always fully her own to begin with, the usual self-consciousness falls away and leaves more room to follow mood and instinct. “I don’t have to worry about being too sentimental or too obscure — the archive has already set the emotional tone, which leaves me free to just play,” she says. “I’m not just ‘covering’ an old song; I’m using the archive as a poetic trigger to create something new that feels authentic to right now.”
That last part gets to the point faster than any genre description could. Rosier’s whole thing lives in that gap between inherited language and present tense feeling. “Plus d’amis” doesn’t sound like a museum piece. It sounds blurred, slow-moving, intimate, a little fogged over. Safia Nolin’s guest appearance matters for the same reason: her voice doesn’t arrive as a feature in the usual sense, but folds into the song until the two vocal lines almost stop feeling separate.
The band have said the track came out of stories they found in the archives, all circling the same dread. “This song developed from stories we discovered in the archives—narratives centered on the fear and dread of losing your mother,” they explain. “As it took shape, its vulnerability and deep melancholia reminded us of Québec musician Safia Nolin, whom we’re huge fans of. We reached out to her, and were so happy when she agreed to sing on the track.”
That theme runs through “Elle veille encore” as a whole. Released in November 2024, the record explored maternal figures in folk traditions through written and audio archives from Franco-Canada and France. “Plus d’amis” extends that thread, but it also seems to push Rosier further from any expectation that this should be heard as straightforward folk music. There are restrained guitars here, and a kind of hush that leans closer to slowcore and dream-pop than to anything rigidly traditional.
Listening to Rosier, you’ll recall vibes of Slowdive, Mazzy Star and PJ Harvey, which at least makes sense in terms of atmosphere, though the more telling detail is the way Rosier foreground the voice and let everything else hang back.
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They’ve also been clear that this wasn’t a one-off idea stumbled into for a single song. “We kept finding stories with mothers at the center,” the band say. “One recurring theme was the fear and dread of losing your mother, and this song grew out of one of those stories.” That repetition in the archive seems to matter. Rosier aren’t imposing a concept on old texts so much as noticing what keeps resurfacing and following it.
The group have been playing together for more than a decade, first under a different name, and have toured in over fifteen countries. Their history runs through SXSW, Edmonton Folk Festival, TSB Festival of Lights, Auckland Folk Festival, Rocky Mountain Folk Festival, Port Fairy and Woodford Folk Festival in Australia, Tønder Folk Festival, Festival Pause Guitare, Bardentreffen Festival, Itinerari Folk Festival, Bromyard Folk Festival, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and the Jeux de la Francophonie in Abidjan, alongside nominations from ADISQ and the Canadian Folk Music Awards.
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The real pull is simpler than that. Rosier have found a way to use folk process without turning it into heritage display. They take anonymous lines that have lasted for generations, break them open, and let them drift into something dreamy, uneasy, and very much alive.
Catch the band live at:
March 27 : The Piper, Saint Leonards-on-sea, UK (Double bill w/ Elanor Moss)
March 29 2026: The Live Room, Saltaire, UK (Double bill w/ Elanor Moss)
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