Lucette

During the latter half of the 2010s, Lucette secured a distinctive spot at the crossroads of grounded Americana and dreamy indie pop by issuing a pair of albums. Her first release, 2014’s Black Is the Color, introduced a spirited and inventive songwriter grounded in organic country-rock forms, yet she executed an abrupt stylistic swerve on the 2019 album Deluxe Hotel Room, overseen by Sturgill Simpson, shifting toward synthesizers and hallucinatory sonic layers.

Born Lauren Gillis in Edmonton, Alberta, she studied piano in childhood and started crafting songs during her teenage years, pulling from classic singer/songwriters, current pop, jazz, and country traditions in equal measure. Those early compositions drew the interest of Dave Cobb, who brought her to Nashville to cut the 2014 debut Black Is the Color. By the time Rock Creek Music issued the album, she was performing under the name Lucette.

Simpson emerged as an outspoken advocate, appearing in the video for the single “Bobby Reid” and selecting her as an opener on his Metamodern Sounds in Country Music tour. After those dates concluded, Lucette relocated to Nashville. Their collaboration intensified when Simpson produced Deluxe Hotel Room in 2019, an album on which she discarded Americana frameworks in favor of atmospheric, electronics-infused settings.