Chicago-based songwriter Blaine Teppema has been uploading recordings to Bandcamp under the moniker Sleeper’s Bell for nearly a decade now, with her lo-fi take on folk-y bedroom pop gradually giving way to the polished single “Road Song” released earlier this year with bandmate Evan Green via Fire Talk imprint Angel Tapes. Today she’s announcing that her debut album Clover will finally arrive in February via the label, with that track serving as the lead single. The reveal comes paired with another new track from the collection called “Over,” a ruminative breakup tune set to minimal instrumentation.
This starkness was sort of the point, as Teppema tells it. “I was going through a shitty breakup and Andy Shauf had just released his album Neon Skyline,” she shares. “I heard ‘Things I Do’ and I thought, ‘This is so vulnerable, he’s admitting to all of these ugly feelings and actions, and I don’t want to play the victim in my stories anymore if I can help it, I want it to be complex like that.’ So I tried to write a song that was super dark but still a total bop and really fun to play. I wanted it to contradict itself in ways that are understandable and real. The lines about me pining after this person I seemingly can’t stand contradict themselves, but so do people when they’re experiencing a really challenging relationship.”
The single comes with a video which might require a trigger warning for any local Chicagoans who’ve had to endure the all-day inebriated foot traffic of a certain holiday—though the green imagery is a perfect fit for the album title. Give it a look below, and pre-order Clover here.
