Owls, Omens & Oracles

Grammy nominated singer, songwriter and multi instrumentalist Valerie June announces her new album, "Owls, Omens & Oracles", out tomorrow, April 11th, 2025, via Concord Records. Rooted in the belief that what we focus on is what we manifest, June dreams a songpath forward with "Owls, Omens & Oracles" that leaves no one behind. Halfway through a decade of immense and rapid global change, June asserts a multidimensional blackness steeped in laughter, truth, magic, delight, and interdependence. This album is a radical statement to break skepticism, surveillance, and doom scrolling, let yourself celebrate your aliveness. Connect, weep, change, open.

June has been softening and clarifying her sound since the 2013 release of "Pushin' Against A Stone", through "The Order Of Time", "The Moon and Stars : Prescriptions For Dreamers" and "Under Cover". “A willed and unblinking optimism courses through Valerie June’s songs” (New York Times), this newest work shows her own spiritual growth and the opening of ancestral channels into both her dynamic and distinct voice and her tender lyrics. June is not alone in crafting this sacred field for the contemplation of love and being human. Produced by M Ward (Mavis Staples, She & Him) and engineered by Pierre de Reeder (Rilo Kiley, Jenny Lewis), "Owls, Omens & Oracles" also features a cast of contributors, including The Blind Boys of Alabama and Norah Jones.

An instant foot stompin' hip shaker, lead single "Joy, Joy!" opens the album with an undeniable exuberance. June, playing acoustic guitar, sings, "And when you feel you’re not enough, has this old been hard and rough, a golden seed beneath dark soil, to seek the sun is often rough”, while backed by Kaveh Rastegar on bass (John Legend, Beck), Steven Hodges on drums (Tom Waits, David Lynch), and keys and horn arrangements by Nate Walcott (Bright Eyes, Conor Oberst and The Mystic Valley Band). In line with praise by the New Yorker, “June’s every quiver bespeaks emotional honesty”.

"Owls, Omens & Oracles" is expansive, growing from June’s psychedelic folk, indie rock, Appalachian, bluegrass, country soul, orchestral pop, and blues root system into an intergalactic web of wisdom. Every single note she sings is dusted with her “unorthodox, howling tin pan of a voice” (ELLE), “like raw silk, intimate, elegant and strong” (Garden & Gun). The visceral twists and fierce raw emotion of her voice threads textures and tones through the needle of a multi genre American quilt. Gracefulness and gentleness harmonize with edginess and precarity, evoking a tenderness within even the hardest heart as June holds the complexity of "my life is a country song," and "I am multidimensional, beyond category".