april thomps
This is an album you sit in a field with all your friends and braid each others hair and experience melancholy together. I can't explain it any differently.
Favorite track: Windows.
‘Sweetness’ pressed on limited edition transparent ‘Icy Blue’ vinyl, housed in a printed jacket and paper sleeve. Includes a 12x24 double-sided insert featuring credits, lyrics, and photos.
Includes unlimited streaming of Sweetness
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
Download available in 24-bit/44.1kHz.
ships out within 3 days
Purchasable with gift card
$24.20USDor more
Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album
'Sweetness' on CD housed inside a jewel case. Artwork includes credits.
Includes unlimited streaming of Sweetness
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
Download available in 24-bit/44.1kHz.
ships out within 3 days
Purchasable with gift card
$14.30USDor more
Streaming + Download
Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
When beginning work on the second girlpuppy album, Sweetness, Becca Harvey realized the record-making process itself would be almost as important as the final product. On her first album of alt-pop anthems—2022’s gorgeous, folk-infused When I’m Alone—the 25-year-old Atlanta-based singer-songwriter often felt like she was working in the shadow of her collaborators, writing words to their melodies and deferring to their creative impulses. Made on the other side of a relationship where she often felt marginalized, Sweetness felt like the right project for Harvey to rethink her creative approach and work solely from her own lyrical and melodic ideas. The result of this process was a darker, more texturally expansive record than its predecessor, full of heart-rending songs about pushing back against self-blame and doubt. From its heavy-duty sonics to its naturally flowing melodies to its emotionally generous lyrics, every element of Sweetness exudes confidence, capturing Harvey relishing raw creativity and trusting her inclinations. The record takes place within that moment all artists wait for: when their “voice” becomes so clear, they realize they can just open their mouth and start speaking in it.
Freed from the nagging insecurity that she couldn’t be a songwriter without playing an instrument—she cites The National’s Matt Berninger as an inspiration—Harvey began Sweetness by recording full-length acapella voice memos. To find a backdrop for the vocals, Harvey delved into her diverse, lifelong set of musical reference points, from the country and Top 40 pop she grew up on in small-town Georgia to the later favorites that expanded her idea of what songwriting could achieve: Elliott Smith, Lana Del Rey, Yo La Tengo, and more. With the help of Asheville-based producer/co-writer Alex Farrar and additional co-writers Tom Sinclair and Holden Fincher, Harvey pinpointed a sweet spot between shoegaze, dream-pop, and pop-rock anthems from the turn of the millennium. The arrangements are sometimes nostalgic and always viscerally satisfying in their trajectories, powered by chunky sheens of distorted guitar in the choruses, drums played as hard as pop-punk hits from her youth (“Since April,” “For You Too”), and poison-sweet hooks invested with both defiance and desire. Harvey’s friends from throughout the indie rock world helped fill out these arrangements: Horse Jumper of Love’s Dimitri Giannopoulos, The War on Drugs’ Dave Hartley, Beach Fossils’s Tommy Davidson, and more.
Lyrically, Harvey is witty and unsparing throughout Sweetness, taking inspiration from the break-up lyricists she reveres, from Leonard Cohen to Avril Lavigne. Her memory is acute, accounting for nooks and crannies of romantic relationships history that lesser songwriters might skip over. “I Just Do!” is told in an elegantly scrambled montage that we don’t need to know the frame narrative to understand, capturing that dopamine-filled urge to drop out of existence just to stay in bed with someone a little bit longer. An urgent, ’90s-pop snare pattern kicks in when Harvey recalls: “I love it when I make your friends laugh/I love how much they love you/And all the fun that you guys have.” These songs sparkle with details like this, mini-scenes that help create a 360-degree view of heartbreak.
Inside jokes give depth to moments of both grieving and annoyance, even when their context isn’t fully clear. In “I Was Her Too,” she references The Waterboys’ 1985 hit “The Whole of the Moon” to describe feeling alienated by random musical overtures from an ex (“Did you really see the crescent?/I don’t even know what that means”). Harvey explains: “The person that [‘I Was Her Too’] is about sent that song to me and said it reminded him of me, and I never knew why. I was like, ‘I don't know if that was like a good or bad thing,’ because when I listen to the song, I'm like, ‘Okay, like, I guess so.’” It’s both a funny and poignant moment: Unresolved questions about a person you loved—even slight or ridiculous ones—take on a bittersweet profundity once you accept that you may never have answers to them.
For Harvey, the other major quotation on Sweetness points toward something at the heart of the record for her. The gauzy and melodically stunning “Windows” incorporates a twinkling keyboard line inspired by Fleetwood Mac’s “Silver Springs.” When Harvey mentioned the riff to her co-writer Alex Farrar as “the most iconic part of [‘Silver Springs’]’’ he replied: “It's funny because that's not the most iconic part of the song, but to you it is, and you need to include it. That's why it's so special, this record.” Harvey speaks about this interaction with a hint of emotion in her voice. “I think about that whenever I listen to the song, because I thought it was so funny but also profound.” Finding and articulating her unique perspective, and having it be met with reverence and respect, felt like a big deal even in the smallest moments of making Sweetness. In every way, the album is about these issues: finding your story, sticking to it, and judging what is important according to your own value set. Mixing the playful with the devastating, Harvey coasts on cathartic waves of emotion and monster hooks throughout Sweetness—a momentum which is guaranteed to push her to the front of the ranks of today’s most fearless rising indie-pop singer-songwriters.
credits
released March 28, 2025
All lyrics and melodies written by Becca Harvey
All songs besides “Champ”, “Windows”, “Beaches”, and “For You Two” co-written with Alex Farrar
“Champ”, “Windows”, “Beaches”, and “For You Two” co-written with Holden Fincher and Tom Sinclair.
“In My Eyes” co-written with Holden Fincher, Tom Sinclair, and Alex Farrar.
“Since April” co-written with Alex Farrar and Tom Sinclair.
Produced & Mixed by Alex Farrar
Assistant Engineers: Lawson Alderson, Seamus Rooney & Cam Woody
Mastered by Dan Millice
1. Intro
Becca Harvey - vocals, omnichord
Chris Bailoni - keyboards
Alex Farrar - keyboards
2. I Just Do!
Becca Harvey - vocals
Matt Winship - drums
Alex Farrar - guitar, bass, keyboards
3. Champ
Becca Harvey - vocals
Holden Fincher - guitars
Tom Sinclair - Bass
Matt Winship- drums
Alex Farrar - guitar, keyboards
4. In My Eyes
Becca Harvey - vocals
Dimitri Giannopoulos - vocas
Tom Davidson - guitar
Alex Farrar - drums, bass, guitar, keyboards
5. Windows
Becca Harvey - vocals
Holden Fincher - guitar
Tom Sinclair - bass, piano
Madden Klass - drums
6. Since April
Becca Harvey - vocals
Alex Farrar - drums, bass, guitars, keyboards, glockenspiel
7. Beaches
Becca Harvey - vocals
Dave Hartley - bass
Ben Littlejohn - pedal steel
Jack Victor - drums, piano
Alex Farrar - guitars
8. I Was Her Too
Becca Harvey - vocals
Alex Farrar - drums, guitar, keyboards
9. For You Two
Becca Harvey - vocals
Holden Fincher - guitars
Tom Sinclair - bass
Alex Farrar - drums, guitars
10. I Think I Did
Becca Harvey - vocals
Alex Farrar - keyboards, guitars
///
Thank you to every single person who took the time to work on this record with me. Special thank you to Mom, Dad, Ben, Jimmy, Brandon and Zone 6, everyone at Captured Tracks, Jamila, Holden, Tom, Alex, Larkin and Emmett, Sara Jane and Colette, Janey Rose and Andrew, Miles, and Pete Alonso. Thank you for making me happy. Thank you for spending time with my music.
‘Sweetness,’ the second album from girlpuppy (aka Becca Harvey), is a raw and deeply personal exploration of the emotions that follow a breakup, touching on themes of grief, transformation, and growth. Out March 28 on Captured Tracks.
Found because of Final Fantasy 16's Pax West Panel, if you know, you know! Anyway, that started me on all of the boygenius songs and albums. Love the song, I certainly formed some core memories with it, awesome track on an album of amazing songs. jrevell
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If Veruca Salt had continued down the path of their Bob Rock-produced second record, it might've sounded something like this L.A. group. Bandcamp New & Notable Oct 25, 2025
A lovely addition to the best project of 2023, that at some points feel like B-Sides, but is overall just as strong as the work that made it on "the record" Outer Estate
