Shaped By Sound Episode 2.10 Skylar Gudasz

“It’s wild, the ways that humans try to make boundaries out of things,” Skylar Gudasz says. With her third LP, COUNTRY, (“Best of 2024” —Bandcamp) she interrogates borders of land and sea, mind and body: the limits of the lines we draw for ourselves. Raised in rural Virginia, a deep, lifelong affection for nature comes into focus; her approach informed as much by a summer night sky as the pacifist tenets of a Quaker upbringing. Gudasz released 2020’s Cinema (“a career-making star turn” —MOJO) after 2016 debut Oleander (“the Joni Mitchell the South never had” —Bitter Southerner). Playing in the live bands of Hiss Golden Messenger, Eric Bachmann, Big Star’s Third, and the Ask Me Anything super trio with Libby Rodenbough and Kate Rhudy, she’s staked out her own poetic corner as a songwriter – drawing upon rootsy surf, witchy rock & roll, cinematic Southern twang and dreamy art-pop.