These LITM Singer-Songwriter Picks showcase commanding songwriting, composition, and performance, featuring Levi Sap Nei Thang, Andy Smythe, Ashley Ray Simon, and more!
1. Levi Sap Nei Thang – Seer
Seer is a warm track from Levi Sap Nei Thang’s latest album, Childhood Memories, that takes you back to being young and innocent again. Filled with a refined country twang, the song invites you to listen to its acoustic tones, immediately drawing you into a space of reflection and vulnerability. Levi’s vocal delivery is confident and tender, carrying a sense of honesty and openness that just serves to make the song’s message land harder. It weaves comfort and childlike wonder into music, creating a track that isn’t just soothing, but is also deep, introspective, and filled with meaning. Listen here!
2. Andy Smythe – Leviathan
From its opening notes, Leviathan is bright and energetic, complete with harmonies, layered vocals and instrumentals, and a nostalgic sound that takes you straight back to simpler times. On the track, Andy Smythe explores society’s incessant paradoxical need for a “leviathan” force – a metaphor for that which embodies absolute authority. The song navigates heavily intellectual waters with a deft, jaunty ease that keeps it lingering in your mind as you contemplate what Smythe is putting out; this contrast isn’t accidental. It adds a layer of acceptance – no matter how comical it may seem to do so – to the song, giving it nuance and refinement. Give it a listen!
3. Ashley Ray Simon - Vaya Con Dios
Translating to ‘go with god’, Vaya Con Dios is the kind of track that immediately puts you into a space of introspection and reflection on times past and those coming. The song plays with tension masterfully: the whole thing is a constant push-and-pull, rising and ebbing like waves on a tumultuous sea. Deliberately choosing texture and an analogue feel over a polished digital one, Ashley Ray Simon has ensured that the track is filled with personality and restraint – this is an artist who understands how silences and pauses can sometimes say a lot more than tracks that overwhelm you with sound.
4. Jessi Robertson – Shadow War Singularity
Shadow War Singularity blends emotional urgency with an atmospheric, expansive sound. With a layered piano bed supporting Jessi Robertson’s expressive, heavy vocal delivery, the song explores resilience, internal conflict, and the feeling of never truly belonging in a place that seems like it doesn’t want you. Its writing is simple, and from this simplicity comes its power: with lyrics like the repeating “Every day is a battle to stay on my feet,” every line lands hard because it doesn’t ask you to decode what it means, but throws it at you like it’s meant to hurt. Give the song a listen here.
5. Willa James - Countin’ Red Flags
Willa James’ Countin’ Red Flags candidly lays its emotions bare, creating an all-permeating atmosphere of intimacy as well as discomfort. On this track, James explores the disquiet of knowing things are going wrong but being unable to prove it – the small moments of doubt about your partner that solidify into something crystal clear in one moment of clarity (“Telling all my friends he’s just stressed out… So one Sunday morning when the truth came through / my phone lit up with a name I never knew / All those little pieces fell in place,” as she sings). With a vocal delivery that complements the song’s uneasy nature and an arrangement that overflows with courage and resilience, the track moves between apprehension and acceptance with masterful ease. Check it out here!
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