Samia – Bloodless

Beloved singer and songwriter Samia announces her breathtaking third album, Bloodless, the follow-up to her 2023 breakout and award-winning record Honey. Recorded in North Carolina and her new home of Minneapolis, Bloodless is a richly layered album that was made with longtime collaborators co-producers Caleb Wright and Jake Luppen, as well as frequent songwriting partners Christian Lee Hutson and Raffaela.

“It’s easier to be what someone wants you to be if you give as little as possible,” says Samia. With Bloodless, she seeks comfort in absence, and explores the allure of existing as fantasy. Drawing inspiration from unsolved mysteries – inexplicable cattle mutilations, the presence of God, the impossibility of femininity – Samia examines how shadows can loom larger than their source.  “I noticed a pattern in my life of wanting to live up to the person I became in someone’s head; you become a lot bigger with distance.” Bloodless, which shifts seamlessly from sparse folk to sweeping indie-pop epics, adorned with haunting harmonies and spectral imagery, seeks a path through that space between void and flesh-and-blood presence. Samia would like to be both, to be whole, to be impossible.

Samia repeats that sentiment – “I want to be impossible” – throughout the chorus of Bloodless’ lead single and eerie opening track “Bovine Excision.” The long-awaited fan favorite and live show staple is out today alongside the announcement of Bloodless. Inspired by the mysterious phenomenon involving the bloodless surgical removal of cattle organs, “Bovine Excision” finds Samia’s voice flowing through evocative lyrics with ease, alongside the gentle strum of a lone acoustic guitar. The quiet intimacy builds into a storm of sound, culminating in Samia’s layered, ethereal harmonies that pierce with a haunting, macabre refrain that reveals the album title: “And drained, drained bloodless.” 

“I was drawn to the phenomenon of bloodless cattle mutilation as a metaphor for self-extraction – this clinical pursuit of emptiness,” Samia explains of “Bovine Excision.” These emptied cattle evoke a grotesque vessel that Samia unwittingly nurtured in an attempt to embody something both untouchable and on display, overflowing with infinite, unattainable possibilities and projections. This is just one strand Samia weaves into the intricate tapestry of Bloodless.

Sarah Ritter directed the “Bovine Excision” video.

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