Thomas Dollbaum

The realest-deal storyteller in indie-rock today is the Tampa-born, New Orleans-based singer/songwriter Thomas Dollbaum, and Birds of Paradiseis his most powerful and dynamic work yet. Following up his critically acclaimed Wellswood (Big Legal Mess, 2022) and Drive All Night EP (Dear Life Records, 2025), Birds of Paradise is a goodbye letter to lost loved ones and former selves. These songs find Dollbaum searching for acceptance in the transient in-between places: Florida's pine flatwoods, backroads leading to I-95, where birds fly across the water. And even though the ghosts of his alt-county predecessors Townes and Molina are definitely present, on Birds of Paradise, Dollbaum emerges from their shadows-waving to the past, sounding all the more like himself. This moment-this album-is long overdue. Both of Dollbaum's previous releases had taken way too long to record, due to circumstances out of his control, leaving him frustrated. And after having been away from his home for eight years, the place he had left was no longer the place he remembered, and the unchanging of the natural world felt like a constant he wanted to write about. With a sense of immediacy, he wrote Birds of Paradise in three months. Called up the musicians he trusted and admired the most-Nick Corson, Josh Halper, and Jake Lenderman-and asked them to meet him at Dial Back Sound in Water Valley, Mississippi with producer/engineer Clay Jones. They learned and tracked the album in four days, capturing lightning in a bottle, a sonic revelation Dollbaum's writing has always been waiting for. "There hasn't been a more exciting burst of Southern-inflected guitar rock this year than this full-length from the New Orleans-based songwriter Thomas Dollbaum." -Rolling Stone's Best Albums of 2026 So Far "If Dollbaum's music once painted a vivid portrait of all the low places he's been, then on Birds of Paradise, he sounds all the more confident in showing us where he wants to go next." -Pitchfork, 7.8 "exceptionally deep and lovely-dusky, melodic, just a little bit dangerous-sounding" -The New Yorker "Dollbaum's lyrics are like Southern gothic short stories, the sort that don't end well" -Mojo ???? "Dollbaum grew up with the music of Damien Jurado, Jason Molina and Will Oldham, but his references are literary as much as musical, aligning with a rich sweep of Southern writers such as poet Jay Hopler and short-story writer Barry Hannah. Dollbaum's contribution to that canon is made with care and skill, eschewing cliché by bringing his live experience to songs set in small, dusty towns populated by characters with big dreams but little releasistic hope." -Uncut's Album of the Month, June 2026 "Comparisons to Lenderman - as well as older indie troubadours like Damien Jurado, an acknowledged influence - are obvious. But Dollbaum's music has an extra layer of sturdy, heartland rock muscle that also puts him in the Jason Isbell zone. Like Isbell, Dollbaum is an acolyte of John Prine, and that Americana strain ought to make Birds of Paradise an object of obsession for that audience once they get around to hearing it." -Uproxx