Los Angeles singer/songwriter MaryLeigh Roohan has shared a tender new single in the form of “The High Wire.” At once halting with her husky croons and quivering murmurs, Roohan delivers a heft of emotionality with quite little to spare. An acoustic guitar trails behind her equally stripped-down vocals, meandering in the aftermath of her aching narrative: one consumed by the dangling terror and wonder of “The High Wire.” The video for the song, directed by Lindsey Copeland, sees Roohan wandering the mystical expanses of Joshua Tree, CA — her lonely voice a melancholic but soulful-tonic in the desert.

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The video also captures the song’s tireless gloom and emptiness, backdropped as it is against the lonely rocks of Joshua Tree — but it perfectly echoes Roohan’s ardent commiseration into the bleaker side of folk-pop. Echoing the same wistfulness and anxiousness of contemporaries like Julien Baker, Roohan’s songwriting is deceptively poignant while her vocals tap into this bittersweet, pining Americana that floats throughout “The High Wire.”

“I started writing The High Wire driving alone through Minnesota in 2014 and finally finished it three years later in the quiet of a little California cabin,” says Roohan. “There’s a tenderness to this song, and every one of the wonderful people I worked with – from recording to filming – was able to capture that beautifully. Lindsey Copeland, the director of the video, has an incredible gift for cultivating a powerful but understated emotional quality in everything she does. She masterfully took the quiet intimacy of the song and translated it into a subtle magical desert journey. I hope you enjoy.”

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