Amythyst Kiah Details New Album ‘Still + Bright’ Featuring Billy Strings, S.G. Goodman & Avi Kaplan

Amythyst Kiah confirmed a new album, Still + Bright, arriving on October 25 via Rounder Records. The LP sees guest turns from Billy Strings, Avi Kaplan and S.G. Goodman. The latter appears on the lead single, “Play God and Destroy the World.”

Still + Bright follows Kiah’s 2021 breakthrough LP, Wary + Strange. Kiah captured Still + Bright with producer/contributor Butch Walker (Taylor Swift, Green Day, Weezer) at his Nashville studio.

“On the last record it felt so cathartic to write about all the pain I was dealing with, but this time the songs came from a place of finding joy in the music,” Kiah said of Still + Bright. “In the past I felt so mired down with anxiety that I sometimes held back from what I really wanted to write about; I felt like I needed to play it safe and keep certain thoughts to myself. But now I’m at a point where I’m confident in what I value and love, and because of that I’ve made the album I’ve always wanted to make.”

Still + Bright saw the singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist working with outside writers for the first time. Kiah collaborated with Walker, Kaplan Tim Armstrong (Rancid), Sadler Vaden (Jason Isbell and The 400 Unit) and Sean McConnell (Brittney Spencer, Bethany Cosentino).

Kiah’s new record also saw her inviting notable artists such as guitarist Billy Strings (“I Will Not Go Down”), Pentatonix’s Avi Kaplan (“Die Slowly Without Complaint”) and S.G. Goodman, who sings on “Play God and Destroy the World.”

Kiah detailed Still + Bright’s lead single:

I grew up in East Brainerd [Tennessee], lived in a good neighborhood and had parents with good jobs. But in order to really fit in, you needed to: go to church and have conservative values, and I know being black wasn’t exactly doing us any favors either. My family was different in many respects, my dad always encouraged me to think for myself, but once I got old enough to see that those values didn’t really jive with most of my peers and their parents and I eventually grew weary of not feeling like I could be myself. The facade of Christian piety was not lost on me, eventually I would trade team sports and Girl Scouts for guitars, books, and music. The Matrix was a foundational movie for me, in which I realized that suburbia is a facade meant for people to deceive each other of their humanity through a protocol of platitudes and whispers behind each others’ backs.

My parents saw this change in my interests and social struggles and transferred me to a creative arts school, where I felt like I really was accepted for who I was. I would write and perform a song with this same title at a high school talent show, to which my peers responded well. Years later, a former classmate reached out to me to say they still remembered that song and how powerful it was. I had long forgotten this, and it triggered a lot of unpleasant feelings from that period in my life, and I blocked this person without ever responding.

This version is very different, as I no longer remember how the original song went. But this new version goes out to the classmate, and the 15 y/o me who could see.

Watch the music video for “Play God and Destroy the World” below:

Scroll down to find out where to catch Amythyst Kiah live.

Still + Bright Tracklist:

1. Play God and Destroy the World (feat. S.G. Goodman) (Amythyst Kiah, Sadler Vaden)
2. S P A C E (Kiah)
3. Empire of Love (Kiah, Sean McConnell)
4. I Will Not Go Down (feat. Billy Strings) (Kiah, Butch Walker)
5. Silk and Petals (feat. Butch Walker) (Kiah)
6. Die Slowly Without Complaint (feat. Avi Kaplan) (Kiah, Jeremy Lutito, Avi Kaplan)
7. Gods Under the Mountain (Kiah, McConnell)
8. Dead Stars (Kiah)
9. Dark Matter (Kiah)
10. Let’s See Ourselves Out (Kiah)
11. Never Alone (Kiah, Walker)
12. People’s Prayer (Kiah, Tim Armstrong)