When Saint Cloud landed in late March 2020, just as the world was sliding into lockdown, it felt less like an album release and more like a dispatch from the future. Here was Katie Crutchfield, the Alabama-born singer-songwriter behind Waxahatchee, standing on the other side of her own personal storm, sending out songs about resilience and clarity at the exact moment when her audience needed them most. If the pandemic made time feel slippery and disjointed, Saint Cloud was a reminder that survival was not only possible but could sound luminous.

“I’m in a war with myself; it’s got nothing to do with you.”

Crutchfield’s work has always carried the ghostly presence of her twin sister, Allison — an unspoken harmony line baked into her worldview. Like Kim Deal of The Breeders, another indie-r

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