Singer/songwriter Joshua Jensen introduces himself with breathtaking command and soul-baring conviction on his towering debut single “Hoping,” a slow-burning folk-rock prayer that rises from private heartbreak into a full-throated refusal to surrender, offering a fractured world one more reason to trust that the light can still win.

Stream: “Hoping” – Joshua Jensen

Nothing “perfect” ever gives you goosebumps or makes you cry. You can’t tame the beast too much or it loses its spark. Let it run free.

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When the world caves in, hope becomes an act of courage.

When everything familiar begins to fall away, life narrows to the next breath, the next tear, the next uncertain step forward. Love leaves a light on in that darkness, calling us toward a future we cannot yet see.

Singer/songwriter Joshua Jensen’s debut single carries that courage from a soft, tender reflection into a towering folk-rock release. “Wonder if I fall, will the light still win?” he asks, reaching past despair for one more reason to believe: “Oh lover, when did we stop hoping?” Radiant harmonies, spirited guitars, and crashing drums gather around his voice until one private prayer, made very public, fills the sky. Achingly human and beautifully earned, “Hoping” makes choosing to continue sound magnificent.

Jensen introduces himself with his soul on his sleeve as heartbreak gathers into a hard-won plea for one more chance.

I’d like to hope
We’ll be alright
I’m born and raised
To let things go
In case they die
I try to hold on
To you each night
But I’m slipping like a child
Against the tide

Oh mama,
Tell me why I’m broken,
This love my brother,
Why’d it go unspoken

Lately my world’s been caving in
Wonder if I fall, will the light still win
Oh lover, when did we stop hoping?

Atwood Magazine is proud to be premiering “Hoping,” the rapturous debut single from Joshua Jensen. Out July 28, the song opens the door for the Arizona-born, New York City-based singer/songwriter, whose musical language draws from classical piano, jazz study, gospel, family singing, American folk traditions, and old-world balladry. Jensen produced “Hoping” in his dorm room with his childhood Yamaha guitar and two microphones, bringing years of searching into the first song he was finally ready to share. After completing and scrapping several albums’ worth of material, he knew from the moment “Hoping” arrived that it would introduce him to the world.

Its enormous sweep began at the most painful point in Jensen’s life, but its meaning has continued to grow alongside him. “I wrote ‘Hoping’ as a personal prayer for hope born out of the darkest pit-of-hell moment I’ve ever experienced,” he tells Atwood Magazine. “Rather than addressed directly to God, it’s to my mama, brothers, and lover. Despite there being a lot of questions left unanswered in it, it’s a song that continues to answer the next beautiful, messy cluster of moments that make up a full life. A breakup, a loss of a loved one, a move cross-country, new friends, the tearful goodbyes and promising hellos. ‘Hoping’ celebrates all of them, and beckons you down to water’s edge to take the plunge.”

“I was inspired by songs that grow out of nothing, just a guitar and vocal, and into world-building euphoric scale,” he continues. “Often my life is like that; ideas that start completely insular and in my head then get to extend into the world. The questions the song asks grow from one person asking them to a whole chorus, and I think that shows that no matter how alone we feel there is always people around us experiencing the same things. Gospel music, mantra, and chant have always been a guiding North Star, and the ending of ‘Hoping’ is exactly that. It’s a final prayer and exclamation of hope. I believe wholeheartedly that this song will resonate with the world right now. It’s exactly the song I need to keep singing.”

The arrangement enacts that widening in real time. Jensen begins alone, his acoustic picking and close-miked vocal holding each question in the air for the first minute and a half. From there, the song’s slow burn steadily deepens into an inner reckoning as layered voices gather around him, the percussion churns, electric guitar presses forward, and his delivery opens into a full-bodied cry. “I guess the melody line is only joined by harmonies when it’s sure of the questions it’s asking,” Jensen explains. His uncertainty gathers witnesses until the final refrain reaches widescreen proportions, with booming percussion and choral voices driving “One more tear / one more cry / one more ride / one more hope” toward a cataclysmic crescendo.

Jensen keeps that scale rooted in a lyric full of exposed nerves. “I’m born and raised to let things go in case they die,” he sings, revealing self-protection as an instinct learned long before this particular loss. Yet the repeated insistence of “Don’t tell me to let you go” pushes against that reflex, allowing grief and desire to exist inside the same breath. “This is not a moment of arrival, but of momentum,” Jensen says of the ending, and “Hoping” makes that momentum audible in one of the most extraordinary slow builds in recent memory.

The official video gives the song’s ascent a physical shape. Filmed and directed by Sterling Rip in the mountains of Arizona, it begins in stark black and white, lingering on Jensen alone and nearly motionless – stretched across the floor of an empty room, folded against a wooden wall, wandering through open country, or holding a lone light against the surrounding night. The early frames carry the weight of emotional paralysis, capturing a person caught inside his own questions while the vast landscape waits beyond him.

Color arrives with motion. Jensen rides through the mountains in the bed of a pickup truck, guitar in hand; walks through sunlit woods; crosses an open field; and steps onto a lakeside dock as the last light burns across the water. Friends and family gradually enter the frame, giving visual life to the chorus gathering around his voice. “Everything is homemade here,” Jensen says. “We shot this music video with my sisters Olivia and Elaina, and my friend Sterling – mostly without a plan.” That instinctive approach suits “Hoping” beautifully: The film moves with the freedom of a memory being chased in real time, its grain, blur, sunlight, and sudden shifts carrying more emotional truth than polish ever could.

By the final stretch, Jensen is running at full speed through the woods and across the mountainside, his body finally matching the urgency of the song. The journey from monochrome stillness into vivid color and headlong movement makes hope visible as an act – getting up, stepping outside, letting other people into the frame, and throwing yourself toward life before you know where the path will lead. Dazzling in its momentum and rich with wonder, the video sends “Hoping” racing into the wide-open world it has spent four minutes summoning.

On “Hoping,” Joshua Jensen makes belief sound bigger than fear.

Jensen sings with the kind of command most artists spend years trying to reach. His voice is breathtaking from the first exhale – soulful, resonant, and utterly present – yet its real power lies in how patiently he lets it grow. He never reaches for the rafters before the song earns it; when his chest voice finally breaks open, every ounce of that force lands. His songwriting carries the same assurance, pairing plainspoken questions with melodies built to keep rising long after the words have left his mouth. Debuts rarely arrive with this much strength, let alone conviction. Dramatic and untethered, “Hoping” sounds like the work of a seasoned artist who already understands how to hold his audience close, then send the entire room skyward.

“Hoping” also reaches us at a moment when belief in a brighter future can seem especially fragile. War, ideological fracture, cultural tension, and the daily grind of uncertainty have left so many of us staring into our own reckonings with tomorrow, wondering whether the light can still win. Jensen leaves the fear and grief intact and chooses hope anyway. His song burns like a small candle against it all – a reminder that our private struggles are shared, and that even one wavering voice can call a chorus into being. Right now, “Hoping” gives us one more reason to keep singing.

By the time its final voices recede, “Hoping” has carried us from collapse to the water’s edge, where the future remains unwritten and taking the next step becomes its own declaration of faith. Joshua Jensen begins his story with a song brave enough to leave its questions open, trusting that the act of reaching outward can carry us farther than certainty ever could.

Atwood Magazine met up with Jensen to trace the years of searching behind his debut, the heartbreak that opened “Hoping,” the family harmonies and musical traditions woven through his artistry, and the world of possibility waiting beyond this first release.

Meet Joshua Jensen at the water’s edge in our full conversation below.

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:: stream/purchase Hoping here ::

:: connect with Joshua Jensen here ::

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Stream: “Hoping” – Joshua Jensen

A CONVERSATION WITH JOSHUA JENSEN

Joshua Jensen: Everything is homemade here. We shot this music video with my sisters Olivia and Elaina, and my friend Sterling – mostly without a plan. I produced this song with my childhood Yamaha guitar and two mics in my dorm room. This is stuff I’ve been mining for years and now that a chasm is dug, it’s time to step out and share what I can at a somewhat digestible rate. I’ve fully finished, then fully scrapped probably 5 albums of music at this point in search of the right elements, but at this point I’m trying to not be selfish anymore and just give. I want to assemble the best ingredients I can and scrap a meal together for you. Can’t promise it’ll be something you’ve tried before but it will be from the heart.

Joshua Jensen: I knew from the moment I wrote it that “Hoping” would be my first song. Solo guitar and vocal was the first music I ever heard as a child, from my grandpa. Although it’s not my first instrument, guitar taught me how to deliver a message simply. I’ve just been ravenous for harmonic expression my whole life, since my early piano performance days. My piano mentor Fei Xu would always ask me, “What is your goal?” when preparing for a competition. I think I’ve finally realized my goal is to give everything I have away. My story is yours now.

Joshua Jensen: It’s a vast constellation I’m continually scoping out, my favorite thing is to trace the invisible lines that connect my inspirations to each other. Anais Mitchell’s pen is heroic. Shirley Caesar’s early albums will gently command you to ascension. Joni Mitchell’s discography is the same feeling of first driving into an unexplored National Park. My playlists will go from Little Simz to Eric Whitacre then Bill Evans to Bon Iver and end with a Max Richter piece. Morten Lauridsen, John Williams, Stevie Wonder, Madison Cunningham are all a part of my life.

Joshua Jensen: Those are all branches from the same tree. Now I try to just sit under it, observe, and express what I see. I think genre was only invented to make things more marketable and consumable, so adhering too closely to the “rules” will always leave you wanting more. Humans love making all kinds of sounds, I’m just trying to figure out what I love the most. Chasing the goosebumps. Who knows, maybe I’ll make something completely different next. Just finding a groove.

Joshua Jensen: I started falling in love with someone who I knew wouldn’t feel the same way I did. At the end of that falling, once you hit the ground, all the brokenness inside you will reveal itself in the most disarming way. All you have left is choices. Either to become engulfed in self-doubt and despair or choose humility and let your wounds teach you. The bridge of the song is the beginning of that step-by-step journey for me. It just came to me in the middle of the night. One more tear, one more cry, letting the tears fall, letting yourself fall apart. Only through that process can you prepare for another chance at love.

Joshua Jensen: At the moment I wrote it, those all just fell naturally onto the page, but on further reflection it dawned on me that those three focal points represent the complete picture of human relationships. Your parental figures, your siblings and broader community, and your intimate partners. It’s a prayer to the divinity within each of those figureheads. Primarily the prayer is directed to capital M, “Mama.” Mother Earth, Skywoman, Mother of the Way, etc. She seems to be the person I’m most eager to commune with nowadays. I think the world is hungry for that too. Why else has the “americana” genre skyrocketed in the last few years? We need to redefine some things.

Joshua Jensen: When you stare into the abyss it stares back at you. It’s a constant battle for me that I feel I have to be the unfaltering pillar that everyone can rely on, and of course that’s not realistic. I feel like my loved ones will fall apart without me there, but I’m reaching out in faith, hoping that that won’t actually happen.

Joshua Jensen: Great question. I guess the melody line is only joined by harmonies when it’s sure of the questions it’s asking. Sometimes you feel like you’re the only one going through heartache, but the more you look around, you’ll be overwhelmed by the chorus of voices that echo the same emotions. None of us are ever truly alone, and that’s reflected in the song.

Joshua Jensen: This is not a moment of arrival, but of momentum. A full life is built of these little moments; one more good cry, one more adventure, one more song to sing. All of those catapulting us into the wide-open sky of a new chapter. Or a new discography unfolding (yay!)

Joshua Jensen: The songs will come to me when they need to. You can’t force it, but just live your life and keep your eyes open. All I’ve been searching for is the time and space to let the river pass through. Hard to find time when you’re just trying to have a job and support yourself though, so you have to be intentional. Get outside, look up and say, “Okay, I’m ready now.”

Joshua Jensen: “Hoping” is bursting open the door to a world I’m still running around in myself. I think every song I write is more honest than the last one. More and more crying and laughing and hugging people close. More is coming so get ready to roll your windows down and press play.

Joshua Jensen: I hope people see themselves in the story. Hopefully it will have a life of its own in the greater consciousness and lead people to genuinely find joy beyond all the loneliness and suffering that is rampant today. I’ve certainly learned that nothing can or will be perfect before you put it out, but it’s meant to be that way. Nothing “perfect” ever gives you goosebumps or makes you cry. You can’t tame the beast too much or it loses its spark. Let it run free.

Joshua Jensen: “Where Did Everyone Go” Nat King Cole is my favorite record right now, severely underrated. Bernice Johnson Reagon: Folk Songs is a consistent home base – just lay down and cry to that. I bought a local New York artist Tasha’s recent record “You are Spring!” on vinyl and it’s currently spinning around in my living room.

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:: stream/purchase Hoping here ::

:: connect with Joshua Jensen here ::

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Stream: “Hoping” – Joshua Jensen

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