Canadian singer/songwriter Katie Tupper offers a slow-burning soul embrace with “Safe Ground,” a smoky, intimate confession from her debut album ‘Greyhound’ that finds power not in longing or spectacle, but in the quiet devotion of being someone’s place to land.

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Stream: “Safe Ground” – Katie Tupper

Love doesn’t always arrive with urgency or spectacle.

Sometimes it moves low and slow, a steady warmth that settles into the body and stays there – the kind of love that listens, holds space, and offers shelter without asking anything in return. That’s the devotion at the heart of “Safe Ground,” an intoxicating, slow-burning soul confession from Katie Tupper that feels less like a performance and more like an embrace. Smoky, brooding, and all-consuming in its restraint, the song draws you in close, meeting you heart to heart in a way that feels intimate, grounded, and deeply human.

A standout from her brand new debut album Greyhound (released January 21^st via Arts & Crafts), “Safe Ground” arrives at a defining moment for Katie Tupper. Born and raised in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Tupper brings her prairie roots into conversation with a sound shaped by neo-soul, R&B, and indie intimacy, drawing influence from artists like D’Angelo, Erykah Badu, and Sade while carving out a voice entirely her own. Even ahead of her debut full-length, Tupper has quietly built a global audience – amassing millions of streams, earning a JUNO Award nomination for Traditional R&B/Soul Recording of the Year, and emerging as one of Canada’s most compelling new soul voices. With Greyhound, she steps fully into that promise, offering a body of work rooted in emotional honesty, cyclical self-examination, and the slow, necessary work of learning when to chase and when to stay.

I sleep better when I’m in the city
Better when I’m staying busy
When I’m running around
And see I know holding
me down is a full time
You make it feel like it’s so light
I need you to know

That emotional clarity is felt most powerfully in the way Tupper sings – not to impress, but to envelop. “Safe Ground” reveals one of Tupper’s most powerful instincts as a songwriter: Her ability to translate feeling into atmosphere. Her voice moves with a heavy, enveloping heat – a dusky alto that wraps soul, indie, and alternative R&B into something tactile and magnetic. But beneath the song’s smolder lies its emotional core: A platonic love song written for her best friend, a promise of presence and protection. As Tupper shares, “This is my platonic love song. I wrote it to my best friend about how lucky I feel to know her. It is my promise to her to always be a safe spot for her to land.” It’s a rare and beautiful kind of intimacy – love expressed not through longing, but through devotion, care, and the quiet power of being someone’s home.

The chorus of “Safe Ground” is where the song fully exhales, sinking into its own gravity. “When the tides are low, I’ll always be your safe shore,” Tupper sings, her voice moving in slow, deliberate waves, each line carrying the weight of a promise meant to be kept. Rather than swelling into something declarative or dramatic, the refrain deepens inward – layered vocals folding over one another, harmonies blooming like heat trapped in a closed room. It’s a chorus that doesn’t reach for catharsis so much as reassurance, offering steadiness instead of release, safety instead of spectacle.

When the tides are low
I’ll always be your safe shore
I’ve got you in a constant form
Whatever you’re running from
Offer you my promise now
To shelter when the storm’s inbound
Whether you are lost or found
I will be your safe ground

That sense of smolder is built as much through atmosphere as melody. The instrumentation glows low and heavy, with warm bass tones, restrained percussion, and gauzy textures that wrap around Tupper’s voice rather than competing with it. Every element feels intentionally held back, creating a slow-burn intensity that invites closeness rather than distance. The layered vocals add depth and dimension, thickening the air around each line and giving the song its enveloping, almost hypnotic pull. In “Safe Ground,” intimacy isn’t just expressed – it’s engineered, felt in the spaces between notes as much as the notes themselves.

In that way, the song becomes an embodiment of its promise. “Safe Ground” doesn’t just describe shelter; it is shelter – a place you can sink into, linger inside, and trust not to disappear beneath your feet. It’s the sound of care made tangible, of devotion that doesn’t rush or waver, and of love that proves its power simply by staying.

What makes “Safe Ground” linger long after it ends is how fully it commits to that promise. There’s no dramatic pivot, no moment where the song breaks character – it stays steady, grounded, and resolute, trusting that devotion doesn’t need escalation to feel profound. In a world that so often romanticizes instability or longing, Tupper offers something rarer here: love as constancy. The song’s power comes from its refusal to rush, its willingness to sit in the warmth it creates and let that be enough. As she shares, “I hope ‘Safe Ground’ pushes people to tell their friends that they love them.” It’s a simple hope, but one that underscores the song’s deepest truth – that care, when spoken aloud and practiced consistently, can be just as transformative as passion.

I keep both of my feet to the side street
Love when my drink’s poured for me
But hate feeling needy
What does that say about mе
You know I’d crawl on hands and my knees for you
I dance around but I’m needing you
It’s quiet, but it’s constant

That same emotional honesty carries across Greyhound, Tupper’s spellbinding, soul-stirring debut album.

Framed around cycles of chasing and self-recognition, the record explores relationships in all their complexity – romantic, platonic, familial, and internal – with a maturity that belies its status as a first full-length. Speaking on the album’s central metaphor, Tupper reflects, “Greyhounds that race on tracks are given these parameters and rabbit decoys to chase that are unreachable. If the front / fastest dog gets close to the decoy, it just speeds up to make them run faster. The dogs think they are chasing something reachable, but by design it will always be slightly ahead of them. It made me think about my relationships and how I act in the world. I am often both the Greyhound and the decoy – chasing something unreachable and being the thing that cannot be caught.” That tension runs through the record’s emotional core, giving its songs a sense of motion even in their quietest moments.

Across Greyhound, Tupper balances that restlessness with deep empathy, pairing smoky soul textures and intimate vocal performances with lyrics that favor nuance over absolutes. The album feels like a document of learning – learning when to pursue, when to pause, and when to recognize the places and people who offer real grounding. “Safe Ground,” in that context, feels less like an outlier and more like an anchor, a moment of clarity within a larger journey of self-examination and growth.

In the end, “Safe Ground” offers exactly what it promises. It’s a song you can rest inside, one that doesn’t demand anything from the listener beyond presence. Like the love it celebrates, it listens more than it speaks, holds more than it claims, and stays when so much else feels in flux. For Katie Tupper, it’s a quietly powerful declaration – not just of devotion, but of the kind of artist she is becoming: One who understands that sometimes the most radical thing you can offer is a place to land.

Katie Tupper recently sat down with Atwood Magazine to talk about the relationships, intentions, and lived experiences behind “Safe Ground” and her debut album — and why offering steadiness, care, and shelter feels more vital than ever. Read our conversation below, and step into the world of Greyhound — a record built on smoldering soul, constancy, and emotional truth.

When thе tides are low
(no it’s easy now)
I’ll always be your safe shore
(keep you safe and sound)
I’ve got you in a constant form
(I’ll be all that you need)
Whatever you’re running from
Offer you my promise now
(no it’s easy now)
To shelter when the storm’s inbound
(keep you safe and sound)
Whether you are lost or found
(I’ll be all that you need)
I will be your safe ground

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:: stream/purchase Safe Ground here ::

:: connect with Katie Tupper here ::

:: stream/purchase Greyhound here ::

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Stream: “Safe Ground” – Katie Tupper

A CONVERSATION WITH KATIE TUPPER

Katie Tupper: I would like people to know that I am a prairie princess from Saskatchewan who loves RnB and Soul music. My first-ever album, Greyhound, is out. I would like them to know that I drive the same Honda Civic that I had in high school, and despite mentioning it publicly several times, they have not offered me a brand deal. Maybe this write-up will push them over the edge. I am someone who has always wanted to sing and play for as many people as possible, and I hope that you check out my music and that it gives you a moment of peace in your busy life.

Katie Tupper: That is so sweet, thank you so much. I fell in love with neo-soul music around the same time that I was discovering my own voice and the type of music I wanted to make. I don’t think I’m making soul music, but I’m incredibly influenced by production styles and vocal production that I heard on D’Angelo, Erykah Badu, and Sade records growing up. I also listened to a lot of Adele, Norah Jones, and Diana Krall. I loved hearing these powerhouse, deeper, female voices that were captured so delicately and didn’t allow a single breath go unnoticed.

Katie Tupper: I’m incredibly excited to share this project with the world. Lyrically, it feels like the most honest I’ve ever been in my songwriting. I touch on coming of age and growing up in Saskatchewan, all different kinds of relationships, and what I’ve experienced- both the good and bad. This record was written at a time where I felt like I lost myself and wasn’t trusting my gut and I rediscovered myself while finishing the project. I think the songs are a time capsule for what I was experiencing and do a good job of capturing what I was going through. Production-wise, I think it presents me across a lot of different genres, and it shows what it sounds like when my friends have fun making music together. There was space for play and experimentation across different sounds, and it has a wide reach that I’m hoping everyone can find a piece that they enjoy listening to.

Katie Tupper: I wanted a metaphor for relationships that feel painfully cyclical. I had an image of a greyhound dog on a racetrack, running in circles, trying to catch a decoy rabbit that by design is unreachable. It felt familiar to how I was living in my life for the past few years, and this project feels like what it is like to finally step off the track and look honestly at yourself and the cycles you’ve been living in. I loved the word greyhound. It feels like my mascot in life now, instead of something I’m trapped in. Being from Saskatchewan, Greyhound buses definitely were a big part of my life, and I like that the name can have that double meaning and give a nod to it.

Katie Tupper: I wrote this song for my best friend Molly who I love like a sister. While writing the other songs on Greyhound, so many that touched on unhealthy relationships and cycles, I had a moment of appreciation of all of the beautiful relationships and friendships that I have. My friendships are so important to me, and the older I get, the more I realize how important it is to water them and to be very vocal with my love. “Safe Ground” is my devotion to all of the people I care about, and my promise that I will always be a safe place to land.

Katie Tupper: I love both of those songs so much. “Jeans” is my favourite song I’ve ever written. I wrote both songs in sessions with other songwriters, and I remember leaving with barely finished demos, knowing that they were great songs. I think they are catchy and honest and convey really strong emotions. “Jeans” is sort of the epicenter of the whole album in my mind. Once “Jeans” was written, all of the other songs sort of fell into place. “Tennessee Heat” was the last song on the album and was written with my friend Mary Weitz, who is insanely talented. We wanted a hot, fun song that feels like the middle of summer.

Katie Tupper: “Original Thoughts” was one of the first songs that we made for the album. We wanted to have a light, bouncy, sexy song that talks about exploring your sexuality and how good it can feel to finally allow yourself to act on feelings that have lived in your head for so long. It took a lot of inspiration from the 80s – Prince, Janet Jackson. Lots of colourful synths and bright guitar. I love this song so much and love playing it live.

Katie Tupper: I think I have 3 favourites for 3 different reasons. I love the first track on the album, “Disappear,” for the songwriting and stripped production. I love track number 5, “Sick to my Stomach,” for the insane EBow guitar and stacked vocals. I think it’s my favourite production out of all the songs. I love the last track, “Cowboy Lullaby,” for the nod to my prairie roots and the contrast between this 60s country production and the very cheeky, contemporary lyrics.

Katie Tupper: I hope “Safe Ground” pushes people to tell their friends that they love them. I hope people find a piece of companionship in the album, something they can relate to and know they are not alone in any weird part of their life they might be in. I have taken away a deep love and admiration of every person I’ve worked with to bring the album to life. It has given me the space to practice trusting myself and my ideas, and I really hope people find the time to listen and hopefully enjoy.

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:: stream/purchase Safe Ground here ::

:: connect with Katie Tupper here ::

:: stream/purchase Greyhound here ::

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Stream: “Safe Ground” – Katie Tupper

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