The Ophelias’ Spencer Peppet reveals the ghosts of their long-awaited fourth studio album ‘Spring Grove’ in a candid conversation about songwriting, personal growth, and collaboration – especially with producer Julien Baker, who helped the indie folk band bring their vision to life and create the record they’ve been working toward all along.

Stream: ‘Spring Grove’ – The Ophelias

There’s something hauntingly beautiful about The Ophelias’ music: A delicate push-and-pull between intimacy and grandeur, subtlety and spectacle.

Across four albums and over a decade together, the indie folk band have carved out a sound that’s both unmistakably theirs and constantly evolving: Cinematic yet raw, lush yet deeply personal. With their soul-stirring fourth album Spring Grove, The Ophelias deliver what may be their most expansive, emotionally resonant work yet – a record that reaches outward even as it looks inward, embracing growth, grief, transformation, and the ghosts we carry with us.

Released nearly four years after their breakout LP Crocus, Spring Grove (out now via Get Better Records) arrives as both a homecoming and a rebirth. The album finds The Ophelias – comprised of Spencer Peppet (vocals, guitar), Mic Adams (drums), Andrea Gutmann Fuentes (violin), and Jo Shaffer (bass) – continuing to expand their sonic horizons while deepening their emotional core. If Crocus found the band blooming into a richer sonic palette while holding onto their indie folk roots, Spring Grove goes even further, unfurling with subtle nuance and depth, breathtaking melodies, seductive orchestral arrangements, charged and churning crescendos, and a newfound confidence in their craft. It’s an album that holds space for tenderness and ferocity, introspection and catharsis.

It’s also the culmination of years of change, distance, and personal evolution: “Mic came out as trans. Jo came out as trans. A lot has changed, both emotionally and in our day-to-day lives,” lead singer and songwriter Spencer Peppet reflects. “This record reintroduces us sonically as well. There are moments from our past releases where I see the thread of what would become this record.”

From the opening notes of “Open Sky” to the cathartic swell of closing track “Shapes,” Spring Grove feels like The Ophelias’ most fully realized vision yet.

The record was produced by Grammy Award-winning singer/songwriter Julien Baker – marking her first time producing a full-length album for another artist – and, as Peppet candidly explains, Baker’s fingerprints can be felt across every track, from individual guitar tones and vocal melodies, to the overall album’s lush, enveloping atmospherics.

“She plays on every song,” Peppet shares. “She’s doing harmonies, playing guitar, keys, banjo, synth, all kinds of stuff… She wasn’t there to mess around; she really cares about music. She cared about these songs, which was amazing to witness that, and be part of working with her like that.”

If Baker brought a sense of clarity and scale to the band’s sonic world, she also helped them push beyond old boundaries – resisting the “twee” and “baroque” labels they’d sometimes been slotted into. “Working with her pushed us in a lot of different directions,” Peppet says. “This sound we were able to capture has been kind of in the air for a while, but it took a certain set of circumstances and resources to actually make it happen.”

The result is a record that feels both intimate and monumental, a sweeping reflection on time, change, and memory that never loses its warmth or vulnerability. Highlights range from the charm and turmoil of the achingly intimate title track, to shiver-inducing storm and fever-dream poetry of “Cumulonimbus,” to the majestic, ethereal grace of “Gardenia,” the dramatic, hypnotic pulse of “Salome,” the turbulent, slow-burning catharsis of “Shapes,” and beyond. Spring Grove traces its own emotional arc, each track a vivid scene in the album’s larger story.

“We call ourselves movie music,” Peppet explains. “I think Spring Grove is the first time we really lived up to that name… it finally feels like the soundtrack we’ve been trying to make all along.”

If Spring Grove were the soundtrack to a movie, what would that movie be? Jo Shaffer doesn’t miss a beat: “Bittersweet queer coming-of-age movie set in a rural Midwestern town that veers into magical realism at the end. Streets are always wet. Directional moonlight. A plot point involving a large tree. Lots of tension, and one act of violence,” they describe.

That cinematic vision mirrors the emotional terrain of Spring Grove, an album that feels both grounded and otherworldly, vulnerable and uninhibited, like a familiar landscape refracted through a surreal, dreamlike lens. The Ophelias channel that bittersweet, quietly dramatic energy across these songs, crafting a sonic world full of tension, tenderness, and flashes of magic. Like Jo’s imagined film, Spring Grove lingers in moments of unresolved longing, shadows of memory, and small acts of bravery. It invites listeners to step into its dusky, moonlit streets and stay awhile.

Asked to describe the album in three words, Peppet replies without hesitation: “Cathartic, orchestral, interwoven.” It’s a fitting distillation of a record that feels vast yet deeply personal, layering emotion, reflection, and sound into one rich, immersive tapestry.

At its core, Spring Grove is an album about reckoning – with past selves, fractured relationships, and the ache of unfinished stories.

It’s an album born out of solitude, written in the quiet hours of pandemic isolation and long, lonely walks through Cincinnati neighborhoods. But it’s also a testament to collaboration and trust, to the power of friends shaping fragile sketches into towering compositions.

“I feel like you can see us reaching for this sonic style for some time, and it really feels like we captured it on this record,” Peppet smiles. “Holy shit, we did it.”

Read our full interview below, and catch The Ophelias on tour this spring – find tickets and more information at theopheliasband.com! With Spring Grove, The Ophelias have crafted the soundtrack of their dreams – and we’re invited to dream along with them.

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:: stream/purchase Spring Grove here ::

:: connect with The Ophelias here ::

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Stream: ‘Spring Grove’ – The Ophelias

A CONVERSATION WITH THE OPHELIAS

Spencer Peppet: Crazy, honestly. I mean, we’ve been sitting on this record for a couple years now. So I kind of can’t believe that it’s about to be out in the world and no longer something that we’ve been just holding on to

Spencer Peppet: Yeah, Crocus came out, what, three and a half years ago, I think. And in that time, Mic came out as trans, Jo came out as trans. A lot has changed, both emotionally and in our day-to-day lives. Mic moved to Chicago. Andrea started grad school. We’ve all moved around and started doing different things. But I think musically, this record reintroduces us sonically as well. I think we’ve been working toward this sound for a long time. Even if you listen back to our first record, which we made almost 10 years ago – which is crazy – it’s funny, because it makes me feel old. But then I remember: we were just really young when we started. We were teenagers, figuring it out together. And you can hear the seeds of what this record has become. I listen to something like “Teeth” or “Ten Thousand” on the first record, or “Becoming a Nun” – maybe less so on “Almost” – but even there, even on that record, there are still moments where I think, oh, I see the thread of what would become this record. And obviously on EPs like Ribbon, the Three Covers EP, or For Luck, we’ve put out a lot of music. I feel like you can see us reaching for this sonic style, and it really feels like we captured it on this record. So I feel like it’s both a reintroduction, but also a “holy shit, we did it.”

Spencer Peppet: I think it sounds really clear. I think it sounds really dense. There’s a lot going on in every song. It’s very layered, it’s complicated, it’s interwoven, it’s dramatic. Calvin Lauber, who mixed it and also engineered it, did an incredible job making it feel big. It feels big. It feels cinematic. We call ourselves “movie music,” and I feel like this is one of the first records – maybe a couple EPs felt this way too – where the music really lives up to that name.

Spencer Peppet: Thank you! I feel like that’s the goal, making something that feels intimate and huge at the same time.

Spencer Peppet: Yeah, of course. It’s funny, because no one wants to talk about the pandemic. You mention it – “oh, it was COVID” – and it’s like, no, please, no more. But unfortunately, it was COVID. Everybody was in their houses, going insane. I drove 10 hours back to Cincinnati because I didn’t want to get on a plane, and I’d walk around my neighborhood – and no one was around, because no one wanted to be. I’d also go out at midnight, so no one was around anyway. It was a period of a lot of self-reflection, a lot of isolation. Just a lot of time to think, and a time when I was definitely being confronted with things from my past. I don’t know – it’s interesting, though, because again, no one wants to talk about the pandemic, but it was this very particular moment in time where all you could really do was sit and think – or in my case, sit and think, and then make music about it.

Spencer Peppet: Yeah, I typically bring a song to the band with lyrics, melody, and guitar, and then I just let them do whatever they want. I trust them really deeply now. I think we’ve built a wonderful kind of vocabulary with each other, and I trust that anything I bring them, they’ll make better. So I sent them all the songs, and they started adding parts. Typically Mic will add drums first, then Andrea, then Jo – just to the demo – and then we’ll go into the studio and record everything together. That was really wonderful.

I almost feel like writing songs knowing they’re going to change. I know the way our band works. Sure, I’ll write a song and it’ll sound like the demo for “Cumulonimbus,” or the first voice memo recording of me in my parents’ basement, playing acoustic. I definitely didn’t expect it to be as huge as it is now – but that’s why we’re a band, right? It’s not a solo project, because I think my bandmates make it all better. So yeah, intimate, definitely – but it goes beyond that.

Spencer Peppet: I would say yes and no. I mean, it took about a year just to mix it. Honestly, it felt right for it to take that amount of time. Cal and JB were really going into every song. JB added things afterward. Calvin really dialed in each mix to get it exactly right. And they were on tour, we were on tour, we were talking a lot… it just takes time to get it to the place where everyone feels, “Yeah, this is exactly right.” I really enjoyed that process; it felt like a cool way of doing it. And obviously last year was a massive year for JB, and we were still getting the album ready. It wasn’t ready last year. So this year, it was like, okay, yeah, it’s ready, it’s time, let’s do it.

Spencer Peppet: Yeah, we met in January of 2019, I think. She showed up unannounced to one of our shows – I think we were playing at Dark Matter in Nashville. Do you know the band Phenom? They’re amazing. We were opening for them, and I think her friend was working the door and said, “I think you might like The Ophelias.” She listened and was like, “Oh yeah, I do.” So she came, and I go, holy shit, Julien Baker’s here! I was already a fan of her solo work, a fan of the first boygenius EP. Right away I was like, holy shit. She knew the words to our songs, bought a record, all of it. We were like, “Here, hello.” She hit it off with Mic at the merch table. We exchanged phone numbers, and she was just immediately really cool, personable, down to earth. And it was Dark Matter, so it fits like a hundred people – it was a small show. She was hanging out; it was lovely.

We stayed in touch from that point. In 2020, we were working on Crocus and I messaged her like, “Hey, would you want to add vocals to this song?” And she was like, “Yeah, of course.” Again, holy shit. She recorded them remotely and sent them to us. Even that process was super easy, super fun. She had great ideas, did them quickly and really well. I was like, holy shit, easiest collaboration ever. Then a week later, her manager called us and said, “Hey, she wants to produce your next record.” And I was like, what? Of course. Holy shit, absolutely. So from that point we started working on the record almost immediately. It was very quick. That was late 2020, and then we recorded it in 2021.

I sent her a Google Drive with, I think, 20-something songs. We did ranked-choice voting with her and everyone in the band. We each chose our top non-negotiable favorites and the ones we wanted to do. We all had very similar favorites, which was cool. There was one that Julien and I both liked, but the rest of the band vetoed because it sounded too much like “Wonderwall.” So we didn’t get to do “Wonderwall.” But it was a fun process. She was in it from the beginning, helping choose the songs.

And you asked where you can hear her on the record – she plays on every song. She’s doing harmonies, playing guitar, keys, banjo, synth, all kinds of stuff. She’s mixing, adding things in post. She brought two suitcases full of pedals, adjusted amps – she was incredibly focused in the studio. She didn’t miss a single thing. If you were doing a vocal take, she was sitting there listening to every take, taking notes – either physically or mentally – and would say, “Let’s use this one.” Or she’d pull me aside: “Hey, try this instead. Add this harmony here.” She was so attentive, so focused. She wasn’t there to mess around; she really cares about music. And she cared about these songs, which was amazing – to witness that, and be part of working with her like that.

It was very collaborative. She also knows more music than anyone I’ve ever met. She has such a huge breadth of knowledge – about music, books, some movies. But really, if you mention, “Hey, I want it to sound like the drum part in this song,” she’s like, “Okay, yes, I know exactly what you mean. Here’s what we can do.” Or, “What about the guitar tone on this song?” And she immediately recognizes it, knows what she’d want to do to emulate it. It was really cool. We made a lot of reference playlists for each other. It was very collaborative in a really nice, affirming way.

Spencer Peppet: I think something we’ve been pushing against is that kind of twee thing – maybe the more baroque side of ‘baroque folk.’ Working with her pushed us in a lot of different directions. Also, I really do think this sound we were able to capture on this record has been kind of in the air for a while, but it took a certain set of circumstances and resources to actually make it happen.

Spencer Peppet: Oh, Wyoke, Great Grandpa, X-Ray, That Dog, Json, Esperanza Spalding, Andrew Bird, Lucy Dacus. There’s a Lucy Dacus song on there. Oh my God, so many. Wednesday, Tori Amos…

Spencer Peppet: I have. It’s beautiful.

Spencer Peppet: Oh, it’s so good. To me, that song almost hearkens back to her earlier records, when she had that grungier guitar sound – like the I Don’t Wanna Be Funny Anymore era. I don’t know. I love that song, and I love the moment where she goes, “We can’t talk.”

Spencer Peppet: It’s a cemetery in Cincinnati.

Spencer Peppet: No, it’s not in my parents’ neighborhood. So, first of all, it’s huge – it’s the fourth-largest cemetery in the U.S. – and it’s just kind of a Cincinnati fixture. My friends and I would hang out there in high school. I think it’s a big source of inspiration for a lot of Cincinnati bands. We’re definitely not the first Cincy band to find inspiration there. It’s huge and gorgeous and gothic and sprawling. There are swans and ponds and things that look like castles. There’s a lot of really beautiful stuff going on over there.

I think Spring Grove represents a very specific time in my life. That song is about me as a teenager, and also me now – those two versions of myself talking to each other, and about each other. I’ve been using the Spider-Man meme, where they’re all pointing at each other, to explain what that song is. I didn’t know what the album was going to be called until we recorded it. I actually didn’t choose the album name – Megan and Andrea were like, “It has to be called Spring Grove.” And I said, “Perfect. Sounds great.” So they chose it.

Spencer Peppet: Yeah, for sure.

Spencer Peppet: I think it just felt like a good intro. It starts off a little quiet, and then you hit that first chorus and you’re like, “Oh, it’s a new thing,” which felt like a good introduction. We also got to do a really fun video for it. It just felt like the right way to introduce the world to the record.

Spencer Peppet: I actually don’t think I knew it was going to be the first track. I think Cal placed it first, and we were like, “Oh – yeah, perfect.” But I don’t think we knew while recording that it was going to be first.

Spencer Peppet: I think it feels like a good intro. It kind of does the same thing as “Cumulonimbus,” but in a different way. It starts a little quiet, giving you just a little bit – and then that first chorus really… you can take it however you want to take it. I think that song also fits thematically with the record really well. It’s also very poppy, right? I’d say that’s a classic indie pop song. So we were like, let’s hit them with the indie pop right off the bat. And then later, we’ll get into the country dirge parade, or the big guitars on “Spring Grove,” or whatever. Gotta hit them with the indie pop first.

Spencer Peppet: Yeah, that song is really old. And even what the lyrics are about is even older. It’s reflecting on when I moved to New York for college – it’s about those first couple years. So it’s been a minute since all that happened, and since I wrote the song, and even since we recorded it. Now it kind of feels like a folktale or something, you know? Like it existed once, and now it’s just a story, which is cool. The line is, “I saw your girlfriend move to Sweden. How romantic. How far-fetched.” They’re not together anymore. They haven’t been for years. It’s so far in the past that now it feels like something else entirely. I really love how Andrea did the violin parts on that song. And I love how JB added a lot of atmospheric stuff. Sonically, I feel like it’s definitely one of the chiller songs on the record, but it still holds a lot of weight and power.

Spencer Peppet: Thank you. That was the one where I was like, should we include this? So I’m glad we did. I’m glad you like it.

Spencer Peppet: That’s all we need, honestly.

Spencer Peppet: Party track.

Spencer Peppet: Oh, for sure, thank you. It’s definitely like, “I know something, don’t you want to know what I know?” And also having this feeling that the other person probably doesn’t want to know, because it would be complicated or difficult for them. But I get to be like, ha ha, I know. I know what’s going on. It’s fun. Definitely a little sassy, very winking. Do you know the band Smut from Chicago? They’re so good. They’re friends of ours – they were originally Cincy-based, like us. We knew each other there, then they moved to Chicago, and now we’re all over the place. We’ve been friends for a while, and we love their music. That guitar part was definitely inspired by their kind of ’90s shoegazy, a little dancy style of guitar. I definitely ripped that from Smut. And then we “Ophelia-ified” it.

Spencer Peppet: Yeah. It’s funny, because I think those last two songs are kind of the thesis statement of the record. “I would love it if you could stop coming to me in my dreams” comes right at the end – like it took the whole record to reach that point, working through all these relationships and experiences. And I think “Shapes” is aiming for resolution, while also realizing it’s not going to be that easy. That end moment of catharsis – “I see you’re coming again / I see what’s coming after / reflection in the water / rippling forever” – it’s a recognition, like, I’m going to… It’s that moment of locking eyes with yourself and thinking, I know it’s not going to be that easy. I see what’s coming. I see you’re coming back.

It’s not necessarily a person – it feels like a lot of different things returning or being talked about, or wishing they’d stop returning. It’s funny, because it’s both cathartic and still stuck in limbo. You’re still like, fuck. I know when I go to bed tonight, I might have another dream, and it’ll just keep going. This was also in the middle of COVID, when I was having these endless dreams about people I used to know – mundane but specific conversations where I’d wake up feeling like I’d reached some kind of resolution with them. But of course, it was just me. I mean, I’d love for there to be some kind of crazy dream technology where they’d get that resolution too, but they didn’t.

And I stand by “all the shapes of you” because gay girls deserve their own Ed Sheeran “Shape of You.” Sorry, Ed Sheeran, but we deserve this.

Spencer Peppet: I love the title track. I love “Parade.” I think that’s one the band and I all really love. It was one we didn’t know what it was going to look like when we went into the studio, and I feel like it just got really nicely fleshed out, and it’s become one of our favorites.

Spencer Peppet: I’m actually pretty proud of the lyrics on this record. I think there are a couple songs I was nervous to put out, because they felt more vulnerable than what I’ve done before. In the past, I’ve kind of treated some songs like – what’s it called – like refrigerator poetry, where you move things around to find the best little set of words. And this one felt way more blunt, more straightforward. But also, there’s a little bit of autofiction going on on this record, where it’s not necessarily an exact situation, but an image that reflects the situation in the most accurate way. I feel like I was doing a lot more of that.

There are lines I’m really proud of. Even some of the opening lines – “Not like I could have told the future, but it makes sense” – I like that one. Or “I would love it if you could stop coming to me in my dreams.” I’m like, yes, there we go. I also think there are some that are just more fun. I love having a sense of humor in music. That’s something I really enjoy – where it’s like, here’s an incredibly vulnerable piece of myself, and here’s a little joke. I feel like that little twist is something I always enjoy.

Spencer Peppet: Maybe that resolution doesn’t come easy, and there’s a lot of ways to approach it.

Spencer Peppet: Honestly… I mean, Jo’s a filmmaker – Jo’s made two features so far, and I’ve done the score for at least one of them and helped with the other. So it kind of feels like it would be a movie Jo makes, right? It’d be some kind of crazy folky horror movie, and we’d make the soundtrack.

Jo Shaffer: Bittersweet queer coming-of-age movie set in a rural Midwestern town that veers into magical realism at the end. Streets are always wet. Directional moonlight. A plot point involving a large tree. Lots of tension, and one act of violence. (You can get a feel for it from my last feature Hell Is Empty, which is available to stream!)

Spencer Peppet: I hope it reaches people wherever they are! We’ve changed so much over the time we spent making this record and putting it out that it encompasses many different versions of us. I hope it can hold a lot of versions of the folks who listen too.

Spencer Peppet: Grumpy, Sword II, hemlock, skirts, Oklou, Addison Rae, h. pruz

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:: stream/purchase Spring Grove here ::

:: connect with The Ophelias here ::

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“Salome” – The Ophelias

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 © Mikko Castaño

Spring Grove

an album by The Ophelias