Youth Lagoon

Boise, Idaho native Trevor Powers poured his innermost aspirations and anxieties into Youth Lagoon, a vehicle for dreamy yet tenacious lo-fi pop. Three albums appeared before he suspended the project in 2016; it resurfaced in 2023 with Heaven Is a Junkyard, an Americana-tinged collection that placed his vocals and upright piano at the forefront.

His first Youth Lagoon track surfaced online in May 2011, quickly attracting attention that secured a Fat Possum Records contract. The Year of Hibernation, the debut album, followed that September and examined psychological dysphoria. A broader sophomore effort, Wondrous Bughouse, reached listeners in March 2013; it recalled the work of vintage Pink Floyd and the Flaming Lips while circling “the struggle between the physical and the spiritual world.” Powers then moved to England to team with co-producer Ali Chant at Toybox Studios in Bristol, shaping the material that became Savage Hills Ballroom, Youth Lagoon’s third studio album, issued in 2015. On February 1, 2016, he publicly ended the Youth Lagoon project.

For several subsequent years he issued experimental recordings under his own name, among them Mulberry Violence in 2018 and Capricorn in 2020. Fresh song ideas in 2021 convinced him the new work belonged under the Youth Lagoon banner; those pieces blended country and Americana elements with his established style, many of them built around haunting piano as the central instrument. Producer Rodaidh McDonald joined him for a six-week recording session that produced Heaven Is a Junkyard, released in June 2023.