Small Pond Releases Alex Farrar-Produced Album SOFT BURN

New England indie rock band Small Pond has officially released its sophomore album, Soft Burn, produced by Alex Farrar.

Small Pond writes from the space between clarity and confusion: relationships, identity, growing up, change, and the quiet moments that don't always have words yet. Music is how the band slows those experiences down and makes sense of them together. The goal isn't to offer answers. It's to make space for the experience of figuring things out while you're still inside it, so listeners feel understood, grounded, and a little less alone in what they're going through.

Small Pond Is

Molly McDevitt - Guitar, Lead Vocals

Ian Howard - Guitar

Colin McKenna - Drums, Vocals

Joe Murphy - Bass

Small Pond didn't set out to make a concept record - they set out to survive the space between two recording sessions, four hundred miles from home, in a car named Vicki Jean Volvo. What came out the other side is Soft Burn, the New England indie rock band's sophomore album and the sound of four people who've stopped trying to agree on what kind of band they are.

Formed on the New Hampshire seacoast and now rooted in Portland, Maine, Small Pond built their name the way most great regional bands do: three EPs, a live record, relentless local shows, and a songwriting voice courtesy of singer Molly McDevitt - sharp enough to turn discomfort into something you want to sing along to. Their 2022 debut, Let It Fall Like It Should, established the blueprint: folk-honest lyrics braced against modern indie rock's heavier edges. Soft Burn, out October 21, is where that blueprint gets torn up.

The album was tracked over two sessions, one in September, one the following February, with producer Alex Farrar at Drop of Sun Studios in Asheville, North Carolina. The same room behind records from Wednesday, MJ Lenderman, Snail Mail, Waxahatchee, and Indigo De Souza. Farrar, the band says, played a huge role in shaping the record's sound - letting them find their own answers while gently steering them away from simply copying their influences. Some songs date back to McDevitt's solo EP; others were written in the gaps between sessions. There was no unifying theme going in, just an instinct to chase a sound across genres, from pop-leaning opener Everything's Quiet, to the unexpected wall of sound of Holy and swagger of Warm Mud, before the record unfolds its masterfully sequenced back half. It's a record shaped less by a single vision than by four people who, as the band puts it, don't listen to the same music or write the same way - and whatever comes out of a room together ends up being unmistakably Small Pond.

Lead single 'Silver Coin' sets the tone: a song McDevitt describes as watching a relationship from the outside, catching yourself not showing up the way you want to for the people who matter, and sitting in that discomfort instead of looking away. It's the through-line of Soft Burn. Not a concept, but a mood: a band comfortable enough with each other to let the ugly parts show.

Small Pond will bring the new material on the road this fall, including stops in Boston, NYC, Amherst, Philadelphia, DC, and Portland. After four years and one very long drive, they're arriving with a record that finally sounds like all of them at once.

All tour information and up to date news can be found at smallpond.band.

Small Pond On Tour

October 22 - Amherst, MA - The Drake

October 23 - New York, NY - Cassette

October 24 - Philadelphia, PA - Space 1026

October 25 - Washington, DC - Pie Shop

October 28 - Boston, MA - Deep Cuts

Photo Credit: Adam Gerhold | Download High-res