Chicago’s Park Hills Circle captures the quiet power of renewal on her softly sun-kissed second single “Spring Is Here,” an enchantingly dreamy folk reverie that traces the path from heartbreak to self-acceptance with warmth, grace, and a sense of gentle forward motion.

Stream: “Spring Is Here” – Park Hills Circle

Baby birds stir the morning air with their first songs as buds unfurl into color, the world reawakening in soft, radiant bloom.

Winter loosens its grip as thawing ground and lengthening days make space for release, each small shift in the landscape mirroring the quiet, necessary act of letting go and moving forward. Springtime arrives each year as a beautiful, miraculous turning point – a season that invites release, rebirth, and the courage to begin again.

That sense of renewal – of stepping out of the past and into your own light – lives at the heart of Park Hills Circle’s “Spring Is Here,” a song that traces the delicate, deeply human arc from loss to self-acceptance with grace, warmth, and an almost painterly sense of wonder. Singer/songwriter Maris Maeve O’Tierney captures the fragile, hard-won beauty of becoming in her project’s second single, an enchantingly dreamy folk reverie.

I loved you all through the year
now spring is here;
you left before the birds were returning…
but I’m still yearning

I loved you all through the fear
now life is here;
I remember when my voice
was no longer what you wanted to hear

Atwood Magazine is proud to be premiering “Spring Is Here,” a sweetly stirring daydream from Park Hills Circle, the genre-expansive project of Chicago-based singer/songwriter Maris Maeve O’Tierney. The lead single off her debut album All of a Sudden (out July 10 via Pravda Records), the song opens a window into a body of work shaped by healing, transformation, and the nonlinear journey back to oneself. Drawing from her background as a classically trained guitarist and soprano, O’Tierney crafts a richly textured sonic world that blends fingerstyle guitar, layered vocal harmonies, warm synths, and expressive saxophone – a palette shaped as much by her present-day life in Chicago as by her formative ties to the natural landscapes and storytelling traditions of Alaska and Ireland.

O’Tierney’s path to Park Hills Circle follows more than a decade of writing, performing, and touring alongside her twin sister in the multidisciplinary duo Maeve & Quinn, where music, poetry, and storytelling intertwine. With her new project, introduced through December’s debut single “Sight of the Moon,” she leans fully into atmosphere, place, and emotional movement, building songs that feel immersive, intimate, and alive with detail. Recorded at Chicago’s Bim Bom Studios and co-produced with engineer Michael MacDonald, All of a Sudden brings together a dynamic cast of collaborators, including synth/pianist Aaron Otheim and saxophonist Dustin Laurenzi, whose contributions help shape the album’s enveloping, multidimensional sound. Across its songs, O’Tierney embraces a fluid, exploratory approach to genre and structure, allowing each piece to evolve organically in service of its emotional core.

Reflecting on the song’s origins, O’Tierney traces its roots back to a moment of quiet connection with her surroundings. “As an Alaskan living in Chicago, walking along Lake Michigan brings me home to nature,” she tells Atwood Magazine. “‘Spring is Here’ came to mind one afternoon while dancing with my own shadow reflected in the water. The song is a waltz of changing seasons: Letting go of an emotionally distant partner to confidently embrace oneself.

That image – of movement, reflection, and return – lingers, grounding the song’s emotional center in both place and motion. What begins as a solitary moment by the water expands into a broader meditation on growth, where release is not abrupt but carried forward with grace, step by step, like a dance.

“I took inspiration from impressionist paintings and arias from my classical voice/opera background, struck by the irony of how devastating feelings could be expressed through sunlit pastel colors and lilting, sweet melodies,” she continues. “I wanted ‘Spring Is Here’ to float, with the gently rolling guitar motif and vocal melody gradually becoming more buoyant and bright with the layering of synths and saxophone. The lyrics follow this arc, moving from the strain of unequal care – ‘I was loving on the edges, you’d already ripped out the seam’ – to abundance and freedom in self-acceptance: ‘Now I am here, drinking full the hours of my own company.’”

This sense of lift is embedded in the song’s very structure, where arrangement and lyric move in tandem toward openness and clarity. Each added element feels purposeful, mirroring the shift she describes – from imbalance toward fullness, from longing toward a deeper, steadier sense of self.

O’Tierney builds “Spring Is Here” from the ground up with a deliberate, slow-blooming arrangement that reveals itself layer by layer.

A gently circling guitar motif sets the foundation, its nylon-string warmth anchoring the music in something tactile and close, while soft percussion, and shimmering keys begin to gather around it, adding motion without ever disturbing its calm center. There’s a natural ebb and flow to the instrumentation – a careful layering that mirrors the emotional arc she describes – as tones deepen, colors widen, and the song slowly opens up from within.

At the center, O’Tierney’s voice becomes both narrator and vessel, guiding the listener through the song’s emotional terrain with fluidity and control. “I loved you all through the year / now spring is here; / you left before the birds were returning, but I’m still yearning” – from her opening lines, the song situates us in that fragile in-between, where absence lingers even as the world begins to renew itself. She leans into phrasing as texture, allowing each word to stretch and settle, while layered harmonies expand the song’s emotional scope. The writing itself is striking in its clarity: Seasonal imagery doubling as emotional shorthand, where departure and return exist side by side, and longing doesn’t disappear but transforms. You can hear her classical background not as rigidity, but as a palette – each vocal turn shaped with precision, yet carried by instinct, giving weight to every line as it moves toward acceptance.

As easy as it seemed,
you couldn’t see past the in between
I was loving on the edges
you’d already ripped out the seam

There’s also a striking interplay between light and weight throughout the track. Even as the lyrics trace imbalance and heartbreak, the music holds a sense of openness – a brightness that feels earned. The saxophone, when it enters, doesn’t overpower; it breathes, weaving in and out like a second voice, extending the song’s emotional language beyond words. Together, these elements create a soundscape that feels lush, vivid, and intricately detailed, one that doesn’t rush its resolution but instead allows each moment to settle, expand, and transform.

In that way, “Spring Is Here” is far more than a reflection on change; it embodies that annual transformation, that yearly blossoming. Every note, every layer, every subtle shift in tone contributes to a larger feeling of forward motion – not dramatic or abrupt, but steady and assured, like the season it so vividly evokes.

I loved you too much my dear
now I am here –
I’m drinking full the hours
of my own company

As O’Tierney reflects on what this song – and the album it belongs to – ultimately offers, she frames it not just as a personal release, but as an open invitation. “It’s an understatement that the world is turbulent and divisive right now,” she says. “I want my music to support resilient feelings of home, well-being, and connectedness. This album has helped me move into a more tender and courageous place with myself as well as with friends and strangers alike. Sharing it feels like emerging from a sort of cocoon, and I hope the songs can be a similar balm for the spirit for others.”

With All of a Sudden arriving later this year, “Spring Is Here” stands as a gentle but powerful reminder of what it means to return to yourself –

– to move through loss, to find your footing again, and to step forward with clarity, care, and a renewed sense of possibility. Let this song meet you in that moment, and carry you onward. Stream this song exclusively on Atwood Magazine, and dive into our interview with Park Hills Circle’s Maris Maeve O’Tierney below as she reflects on the origins of her new music, her classical roots, and the emotional and environmental landscapes that shape her songwriting – from Alaska to Ireland to Chicago, and the inward journey of healing, self-trust, and becoming.

As the seasons shift and the world comes back to life around us, “Spring Is Here” lingers as a gentle reminder: Growth doesn’t always arrive all at once, but it does arrive – unfolding in its own time, in its own light. Like the first thaw after a long winter, “Spring Is Here” marks a subtle but undeniable shift – a moment when everything starts moving once more. Baby birds are chirping, buds are breaking open in dazzling bursts of color, and the world is remembering how to begin again – and in that same soft turning, we, too, can find a way forward, carried with grace into life’s next chapter.

All of a Sudden releases July 10 on Pravda Records.

As easy as it seemed,
you couldn’t see past the in between
I was loving on the edges
you’d already ripped out the seam

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:: stream/purchase Spring Is Here here ::

:: connect with Park Hills Circle here ::

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Stream: “Spring Is Here” – Park Hills Circle

A CONVERSATION WITH PARK HILLS CIRCLE

Park Hills Circle: While All of a Sudden is my debut LP for Park Hills Circle, I’ve been writing, touring, and releasing music for about a decade with my violinist twin sister in a multi-genre duo called Maeve & Quinn (featured in Atwood Magazine in 2023)! Like other artists I know, having different projects to express your ideas can enrich your musical range and support new growth. With Park Hills Circle, I was eager to explore how I might channel my origins as a classical guitarist and soprano (voice/opera) toward songs that have a deep sense of atmosphere, place, and movement.

For example, I wanted to challenge myself to sing like a painter – to create a spectrum of vocal colors, timbres, and dynamics, amplified through harmony layering, that would capture in a nuanced way the complex emotions across All of a Sudden. My nylon string classical guitar inspired many of the initial instrumental parts on the album; I drew on its warm and round tone to inform an overall ethereal sound, even for songs where I ultimately translated parts to my electric guitar. To further expand my boundaries in early writing, I used a loop pedal quite a bit to arrange fingerstyle guitar motifs for texture, and also experimented with alternate open tunings for more lush chords.

Synths and saxophone were also key instrumental voices that I heard in imagining the album’s full arrangement, which expanded my circle of collaborators: Aaron Otheim and Dustin Laurenzi, respectively, bring these characters of the musical world to life. Park Hills Circle also kickstarted my friendship and collaboration with Michael MacDonald, a recording engineer at Bim Bom Studios in Chicago. We co-produced All of a Sudden in a way that made space for exploration so that each song found its right form and the magic of specific instrumental or vocal moments found a spotlight.

There’s a mysticism in the natural environment of both places where I grew up (mountainous Alaska, and seaside Ireland), and I wanted to lean into that as one of the main qualities of Park Hills Circle and All of a Sudden – for the songs to have depth but also breathing room, expansiveness. A listener at one of my recent shows likened my sound to ‘Enya meets Joni Mitchell’; I don’t like to be prescriptive, but perhaps this captures some of the musical mood and storytelling approach in my work!

Park Hills Circle: As someone who grew up playing and singing classical music as well as Irish traditional music, I gravitate toward artists that create in multi-genre or genre defying styles, particularly pioneering women – from Kate Bush and Bjork to Arooj Aftab and Julia Holter. On the historical classical side, I often return to Samuel Barber for his soaring violin concertos and lyrical art songs; for contemporary classical, Jessie Montgomery and Missi Mazzoli are creating orchestral and operatic works that highlight social justice issues with an imaginative approach to melody. Ye Vagabonds and Anna Mieke are current Irish folk artists on rotation for me. My twin sister Bryce, a violinist and poet (collaborator in duo Maeve & Quinn), is always at the core of my musical spirit; from when we wrote our first song together at age 8, she’s inspired me with her sensitive ear as an improviser as well as her ability to compose songs that get right to the heart of a feeling or experience.

It feels right that my music as Park Hills Circle holds all of these musical dimensions and artists that I love and doesn’t try to fit into any one category. Atmospheric may be part of the guiding framework, but stylistically I like to leave room for the direction that best captures the emotional arc of a song. I’m also really excited about the ensemble I’ve brought together for Park Hills Circle in Chicago, where I’m currently based (Josh Wentz synths; Kitt Lyles bass; Andrew Green percussion). Every show we play, we find new dimensions in the songs and become more symbiotic as collaborators. Performing is what I love most in music, so to build the world of All of a Sudden on a stage with trusted friends and musicians whom I admire is the ultimate fulfillment. Looking forward to touring the album!

Park Hills Circle: As an Alaskan-Irish artist living in Chicago, walking along Lake Michigan brings me home to nature and creativity; “Spring is Here” came to mind one afternoon while dancing with my own shadow reflected in the water. The song is a waltz of changing seasons. It took me many years and hard internal work to make sense of a past splintered relationship, wrapping my arms around what to own or leave from that experience. Writing this song caught me on the upward arc of healing, surfacing to a sense of freedom by finally letting go.

I took inspiration from impressionist paintings and arias from my classical voice/opera background, struck by the irony of how devastating feelings could be expressed through sunlit pastel colors and lilting, sweet melodies. I wanted “Spring is Here” to float, with the gently rolling guitar motif and vocal melody gradually becoming more buoyant and bright with the layering of synths and saxophone. The lyrics follow this arc, moving from the strain of unequal care – “I was loving on the edges, you’d already ripped out the seam” – to abundance and comfort in oneself: “Now I am here, drinking full the hours of my own company.”

Park Hills Circle: Growing up in Alaska, spring was always a short but spirited transition compared to the long winter season; my twin sister and I had a guessing game of how long it would take for the snow to melt on the mountains and first buds to appear on the trees. And as a child in rural Ireland, I remember the heavy spring rainfall like a veil, lifting to reveal so many wildflowers and eager birds in song. Inspired by these places, spring is an imaginative and whimsical season to me – a time to embrace new possibilities, take a leap!

Park Hills Circle: “Spring is Here” is one of the songs I feel most joyful playing with my ensemble – when the arrangement starts to blossom from just my voice and spare guitar motif, there’s a real feeling of ease and clarity. I think live performance is one of the richest ways to find additional layers of meaning in a song – it’s like shifting a lens; when I first started writing “Spring is Here” I was struggling to reconcile a heavy loss, and now further realized through collaboration, the music feels like a light-on-your-toes dance.

Park Hills Circle: With All of a Sudden, especially the song lyrics and ordering of tracks, I wanted to capture the nonlinear way many of us process our experiences and understand our memories over time – how growth shows us what we hold to be sacred and true. In that sense, “Spring is Here” doesn’t pinpoint a specific moment in a narrative, but is more cyclical. It reflects a time (out of many times) when I needed to find a way home to myself in the wake of changing or ending relationships, and refreshing my sense of self-acceptance and possibility.

Park Hills Circle: It’s an understatement that the world is turbulent and divisive right now – I want my music to support resilient feelings of home, well-being, and connectedness. This album has helped me move into a more tender and courageous place with myself as well as with friends and strangers alike. Sharing it feels like emerging from a sort of cocoon, and I hope the songs can be a similar balm for the spirit for others.

Park Hills Circle: Nailah Hunter (LA based harpist); Twin Talk (Chicago based jazz trio); AE MAK (Ireland based singer) – I’ve linked all three artists’ Bandcamp pages to directly support their music!

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:: connect with Park Hills Circle here ::

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Stream: “Spring Is Here” – Park Hills Circle

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