“I wanna be impossible” Samia Finnerty sings on “Bovine Excision,” the epic lead single from new album Bloodless that name-drops Raymond Carver, Degas and half a dozen grocery items (lime flavored Lays, rice wine, tea, Diet Dr. Pepper, peas…).
Yet the crux of the song — and the full album — is not centered on real things; it’s the things that aren’t actually there. The ghosts and the drained things. The “doll eyes” and the leeches with nothing to consume because you, yourself are devoid of what they need.
Samia’s first two albums, 2020’s The Baby and 2023’s Honey, were an introduction to Samia’s acutely introspective observations. On Bloodless, she takes that to a new level by observing herself with an almost third-person focus, hoping to understand how she’s come to be the woman she is and why. How the men around her have altered her in a way she’s still unraveling, and realizing that unraveling is universal.
Ahead of the release of Bloodless, Samia mentioned her repeated observation that women everywhere — no matter their relationship to men — need to shape and contort themselves to appease those men. And therein lies the biggest theme of her new album: identity and how it’s built. Who are we truly when this influence is in play? How often do we dim ourselves and become “bloodless,” so to speak?
Samia’s revelations began through her practice of poetry while moving from New York to Nashville and then Los Angeles to Minneapolis. She settled into her newest city with the help of indie-pop band Hippo Campus and got a hand from another group when she hit the road again to record at Sylvan Esso’s “Betty’s” studio in North Carolina.
It was there that she worked with the beloved electro-pop duo and also teamed up with Minnesota x North Carolina friend and producer Caleb Wright to let everything flow. The result? A strong, deep and curious record that’s as epic as it is pop, as pretty as it is spooky and knowing as much as it is questioning.
Due out April 25 on Grand Jury Records, Bloodless chronicles an interesting period of enlightenment for Samia, who will bring the record to Milwaukee for a June 5 show at Turner Hall Ballroom. Shortly after she released that lead single from the album, Samia joined me to talk about the Twin Cities, Sylvan Esso and her fervent fandom for Father John Misty.
The following interview highlights have been lightly edited for length and clarity.
On being a transplant to the Minneapolis scene:
I moved here [in December 2024], so it hasn't been very long. But I've been coming here for a long time to make music, and most of my best friends live here, so it's been a long time coming.
I just think the community here is so inspiring. That's something I really need as an artist: to be amongst people who inspire me. The scene here really seems to have each other's backs. Those are all core values for me. And, also, it's just great. You can do so much here, and it's not like an overwhelming city, you know? So it's all my favorite things.
On the North Carolina connection and working at Sylvan Esso’s studio:
They [Sylvan Esso] always just make you feel welcome there. So that feels like a second home to me. And I think anyone who's ever been there would say the same.
My friend Caleb [Wright], who I make all my music with, lives there now. So the first time when we went to Betty’s to make Honey, he fell in love with North Carolina. He and his whole family actually moved there [from Minnesota].
So that's been exciting now to be more immersed in that community through him and always have a place there through him. We sort of bounce back and forth now between North Carolina and Minneapolis because that's just where my collaborators are.
On what kicked everything into gear for this album:
I really got back into writing poems about a year and a half ago, which is when I also incidentally started writing the songs on this album. That's the most exciting way for me to write music, is to have the poem and then sort of Tetris it into a melody. So I think it was just like a natural progression there.
The first song I wrote for the record (“Sacred”), I wrote actually on a trip to Minneapolis with my friends, and from there I think that planted a seed of what I wanted to write about, and I was just expanding on that concept from then on.
On reaching self-acceptance, and ditching her “carefully constructed personas” before and during the songwriting process:
You know, it kind of did start with Bloodless. I had a lot of shame. I keep talking about this sort of omnipotent, patchwork, abstract idea of men that came from both empirical experience and also hearsay and just stuff I totally imagined that men would want from a young age, and that really colored my experience with womanhood and my identity.
I feel like a lot of my identity was just something I built to meet a list of criteria from that imaginary, figment man. I just wanted to set out on a journey to get back to the self that might exist in a vacuum underneath all that.
I was reading some Judith Butler, and there's this idea that the self cannot exist apart from your social conditioning. And that was really a relief to me, that you’re just a combination of everything you've learned and then whatever you were to begin with. They're inextricable. There's nothing you can do about it. So that's the acceptance there. It’s just being like, “Maybe I did create this persona and adopt it, and maybe that's fine.” Just being at peace with it for now.
I'm [also] coming to peace with the observation that came from this recurring feeling I had in relationships where it was easier to be an idea than a person and where it's easier to be what someone wants you to be if you give as little as possible. There's something both enraging and empowering about being a myth or a fantasy to someone, and so it's also trying to take ownership of [the fact that] it does feel kind of good to give as little as possible and then just be whatever anybody wants you to be in their mind.
It doesn't beget connection in my experience, but it sort of does something else. The thing in my experience — the way that I've been able to have a real connection — is to be known. And I think to be known, you have to give more of yourself. So ultimately, deep down, that is what I want. But I was just sort of reflecting on that pattern that I'd had in relationships.
On being pals with Minnesota-born producer Caleb Wright and Jake Luppen of Hippo Campus, and where that’s taken her musically:
[Caleb and Jake] just encouraged me to experiment. We have a lot of overlap in our taste, but there's so much they introduce me to, and I really trust their taste, and I trust them to push me.
It’s scary to be pushed by people in case you don't wanna be pushed in the wrong direction; you don't wanna lose yourself. So they’re both super supportive of maintaining my identity as an artist and also showing me all the different colors and facets of that from their perspective. I love them. I could talk about them all day.
About building the “oomph” of lead single, “Bovine Excision”:
We knew it needed to build because the song can feel sort of redundant. Without it, it's the same chords over and over again, and the same melody over and over again. There's no real chorus up until the end.
That was something we knew needed to happen, and I attribute it totally to Jake and Caleb. It just happened so naturally. We ended up knowing exactly where it needed to go, and we all were sort of listening to the same stuff, too. There's a lot of like Car Wheels [on a Gravel Road], Lucinda Williams going on.
On all the blood:
That was a theme that kept coming up: putting a lot of effort into being as little as possible. And that's been my experience with womanhood. I've talked to a lot of people who felt similarly about womanhood, in particular. That, thematically, came up over and over again.
I also just literally happened to write about blood loss many times on the record; there's a song about being a mosquito, and there's a song where the girls sort of are bleeding and draping at this party over a recliner. I do think that ended up being the through line. It's like this idea of giving so much and also trying very hard to give very little.
The “I wanna be impossible” thing, I was thinking a lot about Unsolved Mysteries and specifically with the cattle mutilation [episode]; it feels so impossible and probably is, you know? There's all these alleged accounts of this impossible thing happening, but it's sort of aspirational [laughs].
I think I was actually on a date in, like, 2019 with this guy who was really into alien stuff [when I saw that episode]. And he was like, in the same breath,”You're my dream girl.” And then he also started explaining to me the inexplicable phenomenon of cattle mutilation. I was like, “That's kind of the same thing, you know?” In that moment, I just sort of put those two things together, and then I couldn't stop thinking about it for years.
On getting ready to release Bloodless:
I'm so excited. It's been a really long time since we toured for about a month last year, and that's all we did. We were touring pretty heavily in the years before, so I'm stoked to get back to it and be with my band again and just see people's faces that I haven't seen in a long time.
We've [also] got more videos. My friend Sarah Ritter is doing the videos, and she's a genius. More videos, more visual stuff from my friend David Kramer, who is working on all the design for this project. I’m just more than anything excited to have the whole thing out in the world. I've been sitting on it for what feels like a long time.
On loving Father John Misty, her favorite song on his new album, and which song on her album she’d pick for him to listen to:
Why is that so hard? That's such a difficult question. You know, I think it's “Mental Health,” because it's commentary and it's smart and it's biting, but it's not mean. And I think that's what he does best: He makes you feel loved and … I'm being so delusional, but he makes you feel loved and seen and understood and also is sort of making fun of this thing that we all are obsessed with. I think it's just as funny as it is comforting, which is a special skill. Not too many people have that skill.
I would be terrified for him to hear any of [the songs from the album], but maybe “A Hole In a Frame.” It's the last song I wrote for the album, and it's pretty much the thesis of the record. Lyrically, I think it puts a bow on everything I was trying to say throughout all the songs. So maybe that's the one I'd want him to hear, but I would probably die. [laughs]
