Leif Vollebekk with special guest Hunter Metts
Leif Vollebekk
Leif Vollebekk is an acclaimed singer-songwriter originally from Ottawa who now resides in Montreal, Canada. The artist has sold-out headlining tours across North America, Europe and Australia. His first Secret City Records release, Twin Solitude, was a breakthrough album, landing a spot on the Polaris Music Prize 2017 shortlist, a Juno nomination and gathering over 60 million streams. His follow-up, New Ways, confirmed his undeniable talent and surpassed Twin Solitude in streaming. “[His] songs [...] are pensive and restless, blossoming with stream-of-consciousness verses that bear the marks of long nights spent alone on the road.” (The New York Times). Previous media supporters include The New York Times, The Late Late Show with James Corden, Pitchfork, Uncut, NPR Music, The Fader, BBC, The Sunday Times Culture, The Line of Best Fit, Paste, Brooklyn Vegan, WXPN, KCRW, Exclaim! and many more. Music from Leif has been heard in TV shows such as Netflix’s Feel Good and Lovesick, HBO’s The New Pope, The Bold Type, Wisdom of the Crowd and more.
Hunter Metts
In an era of fast content and endless sensory overload, Hunter Metts believes in the beauty of following your own chosen timeline. Born into a family with a deep reverence for music, the Nashville native got his start composing songs on his grandmother’s upright piano as a little kid, later learning guitar and slowly dreaming up his spellbinding form of indie-folk. Since the breakout success of his 2024 viral hit “Weathervane,” the singer/songwriter/producer has embarked on a steady rise that’s included touring North America as support for multi-platinum hitmaker James Bay and launching his own debut headline run in fall 2025. On his new EP A Crater Wide, Metts shares the boldest manifestation yet of his one-of-a-kind artistry: a selection of songs both emotionally intimate and sonically vast, instantly drawing the audience into his sublimely enchanted world.
Raised on bluegrass and gospel and heavily inspired by Americana artists like Ben Howard and Gregory Alan Isakov, Metts immersed himself in songwriting at a young age but initially held back from diving headfirst into a music career. “Both my parents moved to Nashville from small Southern towns to try to make it in music, but it never really panned out for them,” he explains. “I’d seen how that affected my family financially, so right after high school I went to a trade school for coding.” After graduating, Metts worked full-time for several years while devoting his off-hours to penning songs and self-recording with friends. “I have so many good memories of my friends coming over and setting up microphones in strange places to try to get cool reverb or whatever,” he recalls. “We were just making everything for fun, but it felt completely true to who I am as a songwriter.” With his debut single “The River” released in 2021, Metts quit his day job in 2023 to focus solely on music and delivered his debut EP Monochrome in 2024. Within months of the EP’s arrival, he returned with “Weathervane”—a hauntingly lovely track that landed on nearly every viral chart across the globe, introducing listeners all over the planet to his poetic songcraft and soul-stirring vocals.
Released via Position Music/Interscope Records, A Crater Wide finds Metts co-producing alongside Andrew Berlin (a producer/engineer/multi-instrumentalist whose credits include Gregory Alan Isakov and Rise Against) and recording at the legendary Blasting Room in Fort Collins, Colorado. In bringing the EP to life, Metts and Berlin enlisted a stacked lineup of guest musicians (on pedal steel guitar, viola, fiddle, banjo, piano, upright bass, drums, harmonium, and more), imbuing each song with a sonic depth that’s nothing short of mesmerizing. “Early on in the process I decided I didn’t want to make any choices based off what’s cool to me right now; I wanted to create something more timeless and pure,” says Metts, who plays acoustic guitar and mandolin on A Crater Wide. “The way that Andrew and I worked together felt very organic: nothing was ever forced or rushed, and we took all the time we needed to make the best art possible.”
Deeply informed by his lifelong love of wandering in nature, A Crater Wide opens on the sweetly drifting rhythms of “Telescope Lovers”—a warm and wistful track that channels a majestic sense of wonder. “I wanted that song to feel like you’re driving off into the middle of nowhere and seeing something beautiful for the first time,” says Metts, noting that he and Berlin achieved its spacious sound by recording at a church next door to the studio. Co-written with Henry Brill (Phantogram, Joy Oladokun), “Blue Ridge Run” embodies a glorious intensity in its full-hearted homage to the Appalachian landscape, ultimately building to a free-flowing instrumental at the bridge. “I’m really proud of the moments where we let the music express what needs to be said, instead of filling up all the space with words,” Metts points out. One of several exquisitely tender love songs on A Crater Wide, “Center Of The Universe” takes the form of a stark but captivating portrait of once-in-a-lifetime romance (from the chorus: “They say love can move a mountain/I think ours can move two or three”). And on “Heavy, Heavy Love,” Metts offers up a harmony-laced, brightly swaying track that perfectly encapsulates the EP’s undercurrent of joy. “So many folk songs are about heartbreak, but that doesn’t ring true for me at this point in my life,” says Metts. “There are a lot of happy moments in these songs, and I like that we’re creating a space for those more hopeful or positive feelings.”
As he reflects on the making of a crater wide and his overall journey to date, Metts reveals that music and the natural world have long formed a powerful alliance in his mind. “When I look back on the music I first fell in love with, whether it was Novo Amor and Tom Waits or whoever else, so much of it is tied to the memories I made while listening to that music on trips to the mountains as a teenager,” he says. “Being out in nature has always been really inspiring and grounding for me, and it’s always made me feel so free. From the first song of mine that I ever produced, I’ve tried to capture that sense of freedom—I want to make people feel like they can go wherever they want and do whatever they feel like and remind them that there’s so much life to live out there.”
