Jenny Owen Youngs

Jenny Owen Youngs blends insight, levity, and sincerity in her melodic adult alternative songs, which occupy territory between luminous singer/songwriter pop and atmospheric indie folk. She surfaced within the New York anti-folk community of the 2000s together with other SUNY Purchase graduates such as Regina Spektor, joining the latter on tour to promote Youngs’ own self-released debut Batten the Hatches from 2005. That album contained the television placement breakthrough “Fuck Was I,” which prompted Nettwerk to issue her next full-length Transmitter Failure in 2009. The independently released An Unwavering Band of Light arrived in 2012 and preceded an extended collaborative stretch in Los Angeles that produced co-written material for artists ranging from Miami rapper Pitbull to Panic! At the Disco as well as multiple joint projects with singer/songwriter John Mark Nelson. Yep Roc later supported her return to solo album-making with Avalanche in 2023; the record featured co-writes involving S. Carey, the Antlers’ Peter Silberman, and additional contributors.

Youngs grew up in Newton, New Jersey, and first learned guitar at age 14. She subsequently enrolled in the music program at the State University of New York at Purchase during the period when that institution began supplying the core of the emerging New York anti-folk scene; besides Youngs and her acquaintance Regina Spektor, the roster of SUNY Purchase alumni encompassed Jeffrey Lewis, Langhorne Slim, and the Moldy Peaches’ Adam Green and Kimya Dawson.

Spektor selected Youngs to open concerts on the tours supporting her own 2003 breakthrough Soviet Kitsch, coinciding with the period when Youngs composed and recorded her debut album, the self-released Batten the Hatches of 2005. Although the LP earned largely favorable notices, wider attention arrived only after its standout track, the rueful “Fuck Was I,” appeared in the season-two premiere of the Showtime dark comedy Weeds. The licensing led to a Nettwerk Records contract; the label issued a remixed and repackaged edition of Batten the Hatches in March 2007 and, that same month, delivered the odds-and-ends collection Take Off All Your Clothes EP, which gathered several versions of “Fuck Was I,” a live recording, and a folk-rock interpretation of Nelly’s “Hot in Herre.”

Youngs resumed touring soon afterward, supporting artists including Vienna Teng and Aimee Mann while developing songs for her follow-up. Transmitter Failure reached stores in May 2009 as her second album and first proper label release; it displayed her ongoing fusion of buoyant pop material with more earnest pieces and an instrumental palette that moved from strings and ukulele to full rock-band arrangements. The partly live Last Person EP appeared the next year.

After leaving Nettwerk, Youngs put out An Unwavering Band of Light on her own in 2012. A split EP with Jukebox the Ghost followed in 2013, and she issued the seafaring-themed Slack Tide EP in early 2015. Around the same time she moved to Los Angeles and began participating in co-writing sessions; notable results included credits on Pitbull’s “Bad Man” and Ingrid Michaelson’s “Miss America,” both from 2016, plus Panic! At the Disco’s “High Hopes” and Shungudzo’s “Come On Back,” both featured on the Fifty Shades Freed soundtrack in 2018. She also contributed vocals to Tancred’s 2018 album Nightstand and to Chris Farren’s Born Hot in 2019. During this interval Youngs launched the episode-by-episode podcast Buffering the Vampire Slayer devoted to the Buffy the Vampire Slayer series. While she maintained a modest profile with occasional singles, her next EP, Night Shift, finally arrived in late 2020 after a five-year gap.

The mid-2021 EP Echo Mountain arrived alongside remixes by S. Carey, Generationals, and John Mark Nelson. Later that year she reunited with Nelson and Tancred for the holiday song “Fireside,” and her 2022 EP It’s Dangerous to Go Alone contained a duet with Nelson. An instrumental set of atmospheric indie folk issued under the title OFFAIR: from the forest floor on OFFAIR Records/Universal Music Canada prominently featured John Mark Nelson along with appearances by Tancred and Hrishikesh Hirway.

Personal experiences of divorce and subsequent new love supplied the principal themes for Youngs’ first full-length pop album in more than a decade. Avalanche, produced by Josh Kaufman and carrying co-writing contributions from S. Carey, Peter Silberman, Madi Diaz, and Christian Lee Hutson, marked her debut on the Yep Roc label upon release in September 2023. Additional Youngs co-writes appeared that same year on albums by Joseph and Alex Lahey.