Two years ago, Hurricane Helene hit Western North Carolina and destroyed a lot of people's homes in and around the city of Asheville. The indie rock singer-songwriter Indigo de Souza's house in Marshall, North Carolina was flooded, and she lost nearly all of her possessions. After that experience, de Souza wrote and recorded a new album. It's finished, ready to be released — fully mixed and mastered, with cover art painted by de Souza's mother. But there's a problem. After requesting to be prematurely released from her deal with Loma Vista Records, de Souza is negotiating to buy the rights to release the album, and she has started a Go FundMe campaign to raise the necessary money.
Indigo de Souza started her career with three acclaimed albums on Saddle Creek. Before releasing last year's Precipice, she signed with Loma Vista. (She also released the one-off single "Come To God" on Loma Vista earlier this year.) On her GoFundMe page, de Souza writes that she came to realize that signing her deal was "a mistake":
I gave it my absolute all — but over time, I came to realize that the relationship was not aligned with my values. I wasn’t feeling positive growth. Things felt harder — harder to work, harder to create, harder to manage my mental health, and harder to stay connected and true to my spirit as an artist and person. I felt a centering around business, money, and bureaucracy in a way that I had not experienced before.
I felt like I couldn't move, and it made me sick. I knew I had made a mistake and that I couldn’t thrive in that kind of work environment.
De Souza never mentions the larger label by name, but she released Precipice through Loma Vista, so that's what she's talking about. She writes, "No matter what size artist you are, the contracts make it intricately difficult to leave" and describes the termination negotiations as "one of the most demoralizing experiences of my life... It has been indescribably painful to feel this album just sitting there, finished, while I have been waiting and negotiating its freedom."
De Souza wants to release the album independently, she she writes that she has "offered to repay every cent they invested in the making of this record." To that end, she's trying to raise $90,000 on her GoFundMe. As I write this, she's about a tenth of the way there, less than 24 hours after announcing the campaign. You can read her full account and contribute to her cause here.
In conjunction with the campaign, de Souza has shared an old four-track recording of a song that she wrote when she was nine.