Josaleigh Pollett (any/all pronouns, pronounced pah-LITT) is a singer-songwriter from Salt Lake City, and their fourth album If I Let It Quiet was released on 24 July by Audio Antihero and Lavender Vinyl, on digital and vinyl.
Making it was harder than usual. Their long-time collaborator and producer Jordan Watko, of Crowd Shy, moved to Japan, so the pair had to work across great distances from 2024 to 2025. Pollett says the record was made mostly in their makeshift home studio in Salt Lake City and in Watko's apartment in Japan.
Keeping a collaboration going after the producer moves to the other side of the world is not how most albums get made, and that story is a big part of why I'm backing this one here. I'd like more people to hear what the two of them came out with.
This is their third record together. The 2023 album In the Garden, By the Weeds reached a broader audience with support from NPR Music's All Songs Considered, and Pollett has since shared bills with St. Vincent, Torres, Deep Sea Diver, DeVotchKa, Mini Trees and Hibou, and played Kilby Block Party. In January 2025 they wrote a song a day and released the results as bro's bad january.
The singles from the new album were Radio Player, The Witness, Like a River and, on 14 July, Bed of Quiet. The press release says Bed of Quiet sets guitar crunch and percussive grooves against Watko's ambient production and samples from Chris Walla of Death Cab for Cutie – instrumental recordings from the early 2010s that Walla hadn't used himself. Pollett calls it "an over-thinker's anthem", a song for the sleepless. Andrew Goldring mixed and mastered the album and also brought more instrumentation to it.
Paste Magazine called it "one of the most exciting indie releases of the year so far" and NPR Music "a tender triumph". The label files it under indie, electronic and alt pop, for fans of Indigo De Souza, Half Waif and Low. There are 12 tracks, from the opener Shed Piano, Birds to the closer Tacit.
Listen to the album on Bandcamp: https://josaleighpollett.bandcamp.com/album/if-i-let-it-quiet
Stream it: https://recordu.lnk.to/if-i-let-it-quiet
Hear Bed of Quiet: https://josaleighpollett.bandcamp.com/track/bed-of-quiet