Nashville, TN · psych-folk · indie rock

Liz Cooper

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Hazy, hypnotic psych-folk turned scrappy indie rock — languid fingerpicking that boils over into loose-limbed guitar jams, Nashville cool with no Nashville gloss.

Liz Cooper grew up in Baltimore, Maryland, where she was a competitive high school golfer good enough to earn a scholarship to Towson University. She left after a single semester to pursue music instead, moving to Nashville in 2012 to focus on songwriting and performance, the city where she would spend the next stretch of her career.

In Nashville she formed Liz Cooper & The Stampede with bassist Grant Prettyman and drummer Ky Baker, later replaced by Ryan Usher. The band self-released the EP Monsters in 2014, toured widely including stops at Austin City Limits and Newport Folk Festival, and released the album Window Flowers in 2018, mixing dreamy psychedelic textures with tighter folk-rock songwriting.

Her guitar playing sits at the centre of the music, moving between delicate fingerpicked figures and extended psychedelic jams, with vocals that tend toward the unhurried. That push and pull between control and looseness has carried through every phase of her career, from the Stampede years to her solo records.

After relocating to Brooklyn, Cooper began releasing music under her own name. Her solo debut, Hot Sass, came out in 2021, recorded largely live in Burlington, Vermont with producer Benny Yurco, and pushed her sound toward garage rock and fuzz-heavy guitar tones. A companion EP, Soft Sass, followed in 2022 with reworked versions of those songs plus a Lou Reed cover.

A third album, New Day, is set for February 2026. Cooper has said much of it was written on piano rather than guitar, a departure for her, and that the songs trace her experience coming out and her first queer relationship and breakup.

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psych-folkindie rock