(Lydia The Bard / Image Credit: Cara Kealy)
London singer-songwriter Lydia the Bard has just released her first full-length project, the 12-track The Woods, which hit streaming platforms on October 11. Building a massive online presence since kicking off with emotive covers back in 2021, Lydia now boasts more than 650,000 YouTube subscribers and a tight-knit fanbase across the globe. Her shift to originals kicked into high gear with the 2024 EP Afraid of Quiet, racking up over 8 million streams and proving her knack for blending raw narratives with genre-blending hooks. Teaming up again with co-writer Ben Tomalin, The Woods cements her spot in the folk-rock scene, drawing from the likes of The Crane Wives, Florence and the Machine, Yaelokre, and The Decemberists to deliver tracks laced with tough introspection and unfiltered drive.
At its core, The Woods unfolds as a gritty folk-rock collection that balances sharp edges with moments of quiet release, zeroing in on themes of defiance and personal reckoning. The standout opener, ‘The Woods‘, explodes right out the gate as a full-throttle anthem, kicking off with stripped-back guitar lines that build into dense layers of vocals and rhythm under Peter Miles‘s no-frills production. It’s a straight-shot story of rebellion—a young protagonist rallying against a ruined world overrun by corrupt elites—packing the kind of punch that sticks with you through repeated spins.
Lydia the Bard had this to say: “The Woods is an angry, energetic folk tale about a dystopian future where billionaires have destroyed the world. For me, it is a cautionary tale and I hope it holds a mirror up to those that allow injustice to happen for the sake of profit.” Dropping alongside an animated video on her YouTube channel—where her Villain series has already pulled in millions—this release signals Lydia‘s full pivot from cover sensation to a voice that’s reshaping folk-rock storytelling, with her debut headline gig on the horizon to keep the energy rolling.
Stream The Woods:
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