Mikaela Davis and Madi Cunningham are entering their Thelma & Louise era, and if Tim Heidecker plays nice, he can ride along in the backseat. “(Looking Through) Rose Colored Glasses,” the new single from Davis’ forthcoming Graceland Way, is a freewheeling girls’ trip (with Tim Heidecker) that coasts into “Wide Open Spaces”-level jubilation. Recorded just a 20-minute drive from Laurel Canyon, these tight chorus harmonies and sun-kissed pedal steel wear their Californian influence like a bedazzled Stetson. This is cosmic country at its most encore-ready—music for playing the band offstage so you can keep jamming in the green room with a fifth of Jack. Quick, someone fetch the tambourine! (Tim, can you grab it?)
I first discovered Davis through the upstate New York festival Otis Mountain Get Down, as well as her 2023 album And Southern Star, a collection of softly shimmering psych-folk grooves titled for its backing band that’s become a sleeper favorite of mine. Nothing about this new single is sleepy. If your main harp references are Joanna Newsom, Mary Lattimore, and the intro to “The Boy is Mine,” let Davis remind you what country-rock harp can do (we’d expect nothing less from someone who also plays in a band called Grateful Shred). Two minutes in, the tab starts to hit and a kaleidoscope of harp glissandos whoosh us into an interlude as twinkly as the stars above. It’s the perfect come-up before one final euphoric chorus—fortunately they invited a trip-sitter.
