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Mar 23, 2021 By Caleb Campbell Photography by LeeAnn B. Stephan

Louisiana-based singer/songwriter Renée Reed’s music is steeped in Cajun culture. As Reed herself describes, her music is “dream-fi folk from the Cajun prairies.” Growing up surrounded by Cajun and Creole music legends, both at home and in the Louisiana festival circuit, her music imbues that heritage into ghostly folk chronicles of love, family, and forgotten memories.

Reed says of her self-titled debut, “This album is a collection of songs about toxic relationships, seeing ghosts, ancestral baggage and blessings, and daydreaming about love. It is about certain feelings and experiences I’ve had over my life coming to fruition in the past three years. It was all made on a four-track recorder at home, in a place and in a way I feel most natural, and I believe that quality comes through in the sound.” Reed has now returned with the last single from her forthcoming record, “I Saw A Ghost.”

Renée Reed’s latest work may have the title and feel of a ghost story but there’s a deeper emotional core running beneath the song. Reed’s reedy voice is otherworldly and alluring, accompanied only by her finger-picked guitar, settling into the track’s sense of rustic mysticism. She spins a winding tale of mystery and haunting melody, telling both of the titular ghost and a more insular battle with depression and loneliness. As Reed says of the track, “The song is, on one hand, a story about seeing a ghost, but the ‘ghost’ also refers to myself dealing with disappointment and sadness from a multitude of sources and learning about myself as I get through it.”

The accompanying stop-motion video was created in obsessive detail by Joseph Howard and Emily Curran. Reed says of the video, “I’ve always had a fascination with stop-motion animation and puppetry. I’ve also long-admired Joseph Howard’s work, so I was thrilled when he took up the task of bringing this video to life. The lyrics of the song dance a thin, blurry line between literal and figurative, and Joseph and his partner Emily captured the essence of that beautifully with this video. It’s so evocative. Each time I watch it I see something new.” Check out the song and video below and watch for Renée Reed, out March 26th on Keeled Scales.