Clear Smoke. Indie Exclusive. Catalog Number: GJ00913 Color: Grey Format: LP UPC: 855579007628 Bovine excision, a mysterious phenomenon involving the bloodless surgical removal of cattle organs, serves as the eerie inspiration for the opening track of Samia's third album, aptly titled Bloodless. Her voice flows with ease, weaving through the gentle strum of a lone acoustic guitar. The quiet intimacy builds into a storm of sound, culminating in Samia's layered, ethereal harmonies that pierce with a haunting, macabre refrain: "And drained, drained bloodless." This hollow shape morphs into a grotesque vessel, brimming with infinite possibilities and projections, propelling us into an unrelenting and often violent pursuit of the unattainable. "At its core, the song explores the link between ideals of virginal purity and a semi-necrophilic cultural fixation on murdered women." This is just one of the many threads Samia weaves into the album's intricate tapestry. Rich with layers that shift seamlessly from sparse folk to sweeping indie-pop epics, Bloodless explores Samia's relationship with a fragmented, symbolic version of Men--a patchwork of expectations and imagined standards she tried to meet, which ultimately shaped her sense of self. "I've spent the past two decades unintentionally conflating men with my understanding of God," Samia explains. "The person I became in order to impress this imagined figure is inseparable from who I am today. With this album, I've tried to confront that head-on."Written & produced in both North Carolina and her new home of Minneapolis throughout 2024, Bloodless finds Samia reuniting with longtime-collaborator Caleb Wright and Jake Luppen. The highly-anticipated follow-up to 2023's revered Honey, which followed Samia's 2020's breakthrough debut The Baby. Across these thirteen songs, Samia grapples with the hollow form she once embodied -- a vessel that gained value through its own absence, until playing dead became its own form of life. With Bloodless, she endeavors to disinter the self buried beneath these carefully constructed personas, ultimately reaching a place of acceptance for her whole, imperfect being.