Courtney Hartman, a Grammy-nominated Colorado native pictured at center with fellow artists, has called Eau Claire home for a handful of years. Photos via Kickstarter

Courtney Hartman’s forthcoming album, With You, will be the indie folk artist’s third project – hopefully funding it through a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter. Perhaps the proof of more than a decade’s worth of touring in 30-plus countries, five years of album production, and a lifetime of anxious inner conversation about how to mesh a career in music with motherhood, With You was recorded in Eau Claire this past summer. Co-written with other mothers in the music industry – including Sarah Suskind, Ana Egge, Emily Frantz, and more – Hartman says the creation of the album began almost subconsciously, and after logistical fears were given credence. “I wanted both (music and motherhood), but from most vantage points, it seemed impossible. … When I got pregnant, those fears surfaced immediately as team partners in the music industry stepped away from me and management conversations came to a dead halt. Speaking about becoming a parent, let alone singing about it, did not feel like a safe thing to do.”

Artist that she is, the song still found its way inside her, but was not realized until Hartman reached out to peers – women – who reminded her she was not alone. “A few friends whose albums I leaned on heavily during pregnancy and the early months of motherhood, made special appearances on the album including Watchhouse, Phil Cook, The Nunnery and Tift Merritt,” Hartman shares in the Kickstarter’s description. The Kickstarter for With You runs until Wednesday, Oct. 31, at 8:01am, the all-or-nothing campaign is shooting for $30,340 to fund the album, and support the 20-plus artists who worked on the album (including the album’s core band – Sean Carey, Ben Lester, and Zoe Guigueno – and engineer Brian Joseph). “This is the hard, unglamorous and most exquisite work of our life – to give care to each other. That is what these songs are about,” Hartman concludes. You can see Courtney Hartman perform live at The Good Wives (2161 Eastridge Center) at 6pm on Oct. 15 with Luray.

Sarah Elstran (The Nunnery). Photo by Erik Elstran.

Sarah Elstran, musically known as The Nunnery, invited listeners into the sun-kissed soundscape of “Garden of Your Heart,” the ambient artist’s latest single, at the end of September. The five-minute song platforms Elstran’s clear, lilting voice, not abandoning the rhythmic electronica melodies staple to her solo project, but rather twirling into and landing in a lush version of them. Announcing the single’s release online, Elstran gave a shoutout to mixer Ward Snauwaert. “My new friend @worldwardweb mixed this tune overseas over zoom calls and emails. I’ve never worked with mixing like this and I was pleasantly surprised how it turned out,” she said in the Sept. 20 post.The music video for “Garden of Your Heart” released on Sept. 30, filmed and edited by Erik Elstran. 

The Nunnery has continued  to perform live and collaborate with other artists – including the live debut of Echo Parlor at this year’s Sounds Like Summer Concert Series – since her last project, Floating Gardens, released in 2022. Catch The Nunnery live during her string of regional performances this fall, including an Oct. 21 house show with Bad Posture Club and Humbird, and an Oct. 26 show at the Downtown Micon with Dosh.

Adelyn Strei. Photo via Mtn Laurel Recording Co. site.

Eau Clairians locked into the local music scene around the 2010s will surely recognize Adelyn Strei – formerly fronting indie rock band Adelyn Rose and a collaborator with Pat Keen, Her Crooked Heart, Yohuna, and others – and should mark their calendars accordingly: Her debut solo album Original Spring is slated to release on Nov. 15. The first single from the forthcoming album, “Hometown Blues,” was released on Sept. 15 with Mtn Laurel Recording Co., though a taste of the former Eau Clairian’s new project came in 2023 with the release of “Original Spring.” That single was described as a response to the near-decade ago single “Perhaps” under her previous moniker, Adelyn Rose. Original Spring began taking form after a holiday visit home to Minneapolis and Dex Wolf’s tinkering with a recorded set of Strei. “I’m proud to say (this album is) a representation of the improvised live spirit and something entirely on its own,” Strei said online. Strei's evolution as an artist has taken her across the globe, her sound also twisting toward harder, alternative sounds in the past and turning toward indie and dreampop, the latter recognizable in “Hometown Blues.”