How a soft-spoken Atlanta songwriter braided bedroom indie, weeping country pedal steel, and slow-burn R&B into some of the most quietly distinctive pop of her generation.
The Short Version
Who Is She?
Faye Webster (born in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1997) is a songwriter and photographer whose music sits in its own unhurried corner of indie pop. She grew up in a musical family with deep bluegrass roots, started releasing records as a teenager, and built a sound that blends spare indie songwriting with country pedal steel and a loose, soulful sense of groove.
Two things make her singular. First, the atmosphere: her records feel warm and dryly funny, full of space, patient tempos, and pedal steel that bends every song toward melancholy. Second, the voice: she writes plain, conversational lines about boredom, heartbreak, and small daily feelings, then delivers them in a soft, unbothered deadpan that makes the ordinary land hard.
Signed to the beloved indie label Secretly Canadian, with early ties to Atlanta's Awful Records scene, she has become one of the defining voices of a generation of streaming-era songwriters. To understand where modern indie pop meets Southern roots music, you start here.
Atlanta light and Southern quiet, the ground Webster's songs grow from.From an Atlanta Family Band to Sold-Out Rooms
The Story
Webster's path is less a sudden breakthrough than a slow, steady deepening, each record refining a sound she has held onto since she was a teenager.
Bedroom-pop intimacy and family music rooms, the small spaces her songs seem to live in.
2013
A teenage debut
Raised in a musical Atlanta family with bluegrass in the blood, Webster released her first record, Run and Tell, while still in high school, already writing in the plainspoken, country-tinged style she would keep refining.
2017
Awful Records and a self-titled turn
Briefly the only singer-songwriter on the Atlanta hip-hop collective Awful Records, she absorbed its loose, soulful sensibility. Her self-titled album that year folded R&B feel into her indie-country songwriting.
2019
Atlanta Millionaires Club
The record that made her name. Signed to Secretly Canadian, she leaned hard into pedal steel and slow grooves, and "Kingston" became a quiet streaming phenomenon that carried her far beyond the city.
2021
I Know I'm Funny haha
A warmer, wryer, more confident album that widened her audience and drew wide critical praise, cementing the deadpan-tender voice that had become unmistakably hers.
2022
Reworking the catalog
The Car Therapy Sessions EP reimagined her songs with lush orchestral arrangements, a hint of the ambition that her next album would carry onto the stage.
2024
Underdressed at the Symphony
Her most adventurous record, looser and stranger, weaving in touches of shoegaze and hip-hop texture while keeping the pedal steel and the deadpan intact. It arrived to some of the best reviews of her career.
Four Songs, One Introduction
Start Here
Webster's catalog is best heard slowly, but these four songs are the fastest way to grasp the range, from the breakout single to the pedal-steel ache to her more recent stretch. Watch in order.
01 · The Breakout
"Kingston" (2019)
The song that introduced most of the world to Webster: a warm, loping love song wrapped in pedal steel, with a chorus that sounds like a smile trying not to show. The essential starting point.
02 · The Ache
"Right Side of My Neck" (2019)
The pedal-steel heart of Atlanta Millionaires Club, a small and specific love song that shows how much feeling she can wring from a single plain image and a slow, patient groove.
03 · The Charmer
"In a Good Way" (2021)
A highlight of I Know I'm Funny haha: tender, funny, and unguarded, with a hook that turns being wrecked by someone into a compliment. Webster's warmth at its most disarming.
04 · The New Turn
"But Not Kiss" (2024)
From Underdressed at the Symphony: a moody, dynamic song that swings between hush and swell, showing the bolder, stranger textures she has folded into her sound without losing the deadpan.
The Landmark Records
The Albums 4 to start with
Webster's discography rewards close listening front to back. These four studio albums trace the whole arc, from the early self-titled record to her boldest work. The gold-topped cards are the best places to begin.
2017
Faye Webster
The early self-titled album, made around her time with Awful Records. Spare and soulful, it lays down the country-and-R&B blend that everything since has grown from.
The breakthrough, and a perfect place to start. Pedal steel, slow grooves, and dry humor come together on "Kingston" and "Right Side of My Neck," the record that made her a name well beyond Atlanta.
The warm, wry, widely loved album that widened her audience. From "In a Good Way" to "A Dream With a Baseball Player," it is her deadpan-tender songwriting at its most assured.
Her most adventurous album, looser and stranger, folding in shoegaze haze and hip-hop texture while keeping the pedal steel and the calm. Some of the best reviews of her career.
Two YouTube Music playlists: a First Listen of the signature songs to bring you in, and a Deep Cuts set of the quieter, headphone-reward pieces for when you want to sink in. (Ideally, though, hear these albums whole.) Hit the button on either card to play it.
Webster is the writer and the center, but her records are shaped by a close circle of Atlanta players and a longtime production partnership, plus the labels that gave her music a home.
Weeping pedal steel is the signature color of her sound.
Matt StoesselPedal steelKnown as "Pistol," his pedal steel is the defining voice threaded through her records, bending nearly every song toward its warm melancholy
Drew VandenbergProducer / engineerHer longtime studio collaborator, credited with production and engineering across her albums, shaping the spacious, unhurried sound
Her touring bandAtlanta playersA tight core of Atlanta musicians on bass, drums, and keys who give the records their loose, live, deeply groove-based feel
Secretly CanadianLabelThe revered independent label that has released her breakthrough and every album since, home to a wide roster of indie songwriters
Awful RecordsEarly Atlanta collectiveThe Atlanta hip-hop collective she was briefly part of, whose loose, soulful sensibility left a lasting mark on her groove and feel
The Roots of the Sound
Influences
Webster's music draws on three traditions at once: hushed indie songwriting, Southern country and its pedal steel, and the soul and R&B she grew up around in Atlanta. Here is where it started.
Indie
Elliott Smith
The patron saint of quiet, intimate songwriting. His soft-spoken melancholy and knack for making small feelings enormous echoes all through Webster's deadpan-tender writing.
A touchstone for weary, pedal-steel-soaked country rock. The warm, unhurried ache of Harvest is exactly the tradition Webster's slow grooves and steel guitar reach back to.
An artist Webster has named as a hero, and the R&B side of her sound. Badu's loose, jazzy grooves and unbothered vocal cool run straight into Webster's phrasing and feel.
The relaxed, behind-the-beat phrasing and plainspoken tenderness of a country legend. Nelson's easy, conversational singing is a clear ancestor of Webster's unhurried delivery.
Webster is as dryly funny in conversation as she is on record, happy to talk about photography, yo-yos, and the small ordinary things her songs are built from.
Interview · Noisey
On Pokemon, Yo-Yos and Growing Up
A loose, funny sit-down that captures her deadpan humor and the offhand curiosity that runs through her songwriting, from hobbies to the Atlanta scene she came up in.
Interview · Archive
The Longer Conversations
Across press cycles for I Know I'm Funny haha and Underdressed at the Symphony, Webster has given a run of thoughtful interviews about writing, photography, and staying unhurried. Search YouTube for the full conversations.
Once the four albums have you, Webster's world opens into reworkings, collaborations, and a second life as a photographer.
Car Therapy Sessions. the 2022 EP that reimagines her songs with lush orchestral arrangements, a lovely companion piece and a hint of her wider ambitions.
The early records. Run and Tell and the 2017 self-titled album trace where the sound came from, back when she was a teenager finding her voice.
The photography. Webster is an accomplished portrait photographer who has shot many of her own covers and other Atlanta artists, a visual world worth exploring alongside the music.
The live shows. her band's loose, groove-heavy sets, including a much-loved NPR Tiny Desk concert, show how much these songs breathe when they are played in a room.
The Way to Listen
Do yourself one favor: put on Atlanta Millionaires Club from start to finish, then I Know I'm Funny haha. Let the pedal steel and the space do their work. Webster's songs are quiet on purpose, and the patience repays the attention.
