hemlocke springs

About hemlocke springs

Hemlocke Springs is the project of Noa Getzler, a North Carolina-based artist who started making bedroom pop that somehow sounds both extremely online and deeply lonely. She grew up in Raleigh, studied at Berklee for a bit, then went back home to make music in her childhood bedroom. That origin story matters because you can hear it in the production—everything has this compressed, close-mic'd quality, like she's whispering directly into your skull at 2am.

She broke through in 2022 with "girlfriend," a track that went around TikTok but actually deserved the attention. It's got this slouchy, disaffected delivery over production that's way more textured than most bedroom pop—drum machines that sound deliberately cheap, bass that thuds instead of grooves, and these little melodic hooks that stick around longer than you'd expect. The song's about queer longing but refuses to be precious about it. Just states facts and moves on.

Her debut EP, "going...going...gone!" dropped in 2023 and showed she had more than one trick. Tracks like "Quiet Life" and "Fading Out" lean into this lo-fi indie rock space where nothing quite sits in the mix properly, but that's the point. "Quiet Life" in particular feels like if early Snail Mail was even more stripped down and less interested in impressing anyone. The guitars are thin, the drums sound like they're in another room, and Getzler's vocals are so understated they're almost conversational.

"Small Hours" and "Better Days" continued this trajectory—songs about depression and isolation that refuse to dramatize themselves. There's no catharsis, no building to a big emotional release. Just the slow acknowledgment that things are hard and probably will continue to be hard. "Better Days" especially has this deadpan quality where she's singing about wanting things to improve but sounds completely unconvinced it'll happen.

What makes Hemlocke Springs interesting is how she uses lo-fi production as an actual artistic choice rather than a limitation. The rough edges aren't there because she can't afford a real studio—they're there because clarity would ruin what she's doing. Everything sounds slightly degraded, slightly removed, like you're listening to a memory of a song rather than the song itself.

She's been touring more, playing small venues where the live sound is necessarily different from the recordings. Reports suggest she leans into that difference rather than trying to recreate the bedroom versions. As of now, she's working on a full-length debut, though details are sparse. The smart move would be to not change too much—this specific sound, this particular approach to indie rock melancholy, feels like it has more to explore. She's carved out a space for pop music that sounds depressed without being theatrical about it, which turns out to be what a lot of people needed.

Small venue material. The crowd tends toward attentive rather than rowdy—people actually listening to lyrics. Shows have a deliberate pace that works against forced energy. It's the kind of set where quiet moments hit harder than they should.

Known for Quiet Life, Fading Out, Small Hours, Better Days

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