The story behind STRAY FOSSA’s third album isn’t framed by one major life event, but by the slow accumulation of them. “Blossomer,” out August 22 on Broken Palace Records, finds the Charlottesville-formed trio reflecting on two decades of friendship, the shift of perspective that comes with living abroad, and how memory behaves like a camera lens—sharpening and blurring in uneven turns.
Written and recorded in a makeshift studio in Will and Nick Evans’ childhood home in Sewanee, Tennessee—specifically, the same room where the three first experimented with GarageBand as kids—the album is both a literal and emotional homecoming. After years of living together, writing together, and touring together, 2021 saw the band split across continents, with two members relocating to Germany to start new lives and families. That distance runs underneath “Blossomer,” not in the form of separation or absence, but in the form of clarity.
“Blossomer” doesn’t document growth as a linear path—it moves sideways, backward, through friendships, across borders. “It’s about growth through starting a life abroad in your late twenties,” the band writes. “Growth through feeling a stranger while looking back from afar at the country that raised you. Growth through expanding horizons, families, and new life. Growth as friendship. Growth as change.”
The lyrical theme is reinforced through small but persistent references to photography—film, snapshots, lenses, captured scenes. There’s an awareness of how documenting a moment inevitably changes it. One song nods to the decision to swap out the black and white film before a vacation; another resists the urge to take a photo just to prove you were somewhere. The tension isn’t dramatic, but present. The image remembered is often more real than the one saved.
Several tracks pull directly from the band’s long friendship. “Blossomer” includes flashes of DIY tour life and the friction of making art while navigating creative roles between brothers and longtime friends. The title track folds this into a metaphor of vulnerability and, in a twist of tone, is also about allergies.
Lead single [“Spilled Over”] presents the album’s central imagery—overgrowth, emotional residue, and the desire to show someone a version of the past they can no longer access. “You start turning back / Wondering how it’s fared / Your love, all overgrown,” sings William Evans. “I want to take you there / Where we can never go / I want to show you how / The garden’s spilled over.”
Recording back in Tennessee wasn’t symbolic by design—it was what they had access to. But the move gave the album an underlying cohesion. The band shot videos at their old elementary and high school; one was filmed entirely on Super 8. The album’s artwork comes from Mexican designer Melissa Santamaría, whose stylized aesthetic aligns with the album’s visual themes of time and distortion.
“Blossomer” follows two earlier full-lengths. Their self-released debut, “With You For Ever,” was shaped by the disorientation and enclosure of early 2020. Its follow-up, “Closer Than We’ll Ever Know” (Born Losers Records, 2022), marked a shift toward a more open sound—described by the band as a cautious reemergence. This new record continues in that vein but with a different center of gravity: less about stepping forward than stepping back to understand what got left behind.
Throughout, Stray Fossa hold on to restraint. Their sound remains understated, even at its most detailed. Press comparisons to Cigarettes After Sex and The New Pornographers still hover, but “Blossomer” feels less interested in a scene or style than in building a document of everything that happened when no one was looking.
The record was produced and mixed by William Evans, with lyrics written by William J. Evans and music by William and Nicholas Warren Evans. All songs were performed by Will Evans, Nick Evans, and Zach Blount. “Blossomer” is out August 22 via Broken Palace.
