Start Listening To: Hannah Frances

On her new album Nested in Tangles, Vermont songwriter Hannah Frances channels raw memory, grief, and resilience into sweeping avant-folk.

Living tucked away in the woods of Vermont, Hannah Frances makes music that feels both intimate and immense. With roots in poetry, folk, progressive rock, and experimental composition, her songs carry the weight of lived experience while reaching for something universal. Her latest album, Nested in Tangles, was born from a period of deep personal excavation, written in tandem with therapeutic work and shaped through collaborations with artists like Daniel Rossen and longtime producer Kevin Copeland. The result is a record that confronts anger, loss, and reclamation with unflinching honesty, while also finding moments of catharsis and strange beauty. We spoke with Frances about her creative process, the stories behind Nested in Tangles, and how she continues to push her songwriting into wilder, freer territory.

For those unfamiliar with your music, can you tell us who you are, where you’re from and about the music you make?

I am Hannah Frances, and I live in the woods of Vermont. I am a guitarist, vocalist, songwriter, and poet, and I make open-hearted and cathartic avant-folk music that pulls influence from progressive rock, contemporary classical, and jazz music.

What themes or emotions did you find most challenging to express in your new album, Nested in Tangles, and how did you navigate those?

Nested in Tangles grapples with difficult circumstances and lived experiences within my familial, personal, and relational life. It is always challenging to confront and name edgier emotions like resentment and anger, but ultimately the process left me feeling liberated and clear in my truth, as my writing often does.

Can you describe your songwriting process for this album?

My songwriting process for this album was entwined with my therapeutic process. I was beginning to work with a new somatic therapist and was unearthing difficult memories and learning to affirm my experience in new ways. Creatively, I work in a fast and concentrated manner, utilizing acute and intense moments to channel songs. I had a lot of ideas and disparate parts for songs when I booked sessions with Kevin and we threw all the paint at the wall and recorded a whole load of music within just a few days. I was piecing it all together over the winter and went back to finish up songs and record new ones to tie the album together in the spring of 2024. Song writing generally looks like me sitting alone in very dim light at my desk at night surrounded by stacks of books and poetry and my guitar and my laptop.

Did you approach it differently than your previous work, Keeper of the Shepherd?

A bit differently, yes. I had a more clear vision for Keeper of the Shepherd right from the beginning, I had the arc all laid out chronologically and sat and wrote and recorded it within a month. It ripped right through me like fast wildfire. Nested in Tangles took more time, more labor, more experimentation – which makes sense for the material and for what I was working with conceptually.

How did collaborating with Daniel Rossen influence the sound of your album?

I let Daniel take the reins on Life's Work and The Space Between, as I do with all my collaborators. I convey some visions and then let everyone add what they want to add, what their instincts tell them, and I feel a deep trust in everyone to musically and emotionally channel what needs to be there. I am very open and approach my music with a truly collaborative spirit. Daniel and I worked remotely, had a couple phone calls that were mostly just affirming what he was considering adding and he then sent me a bunch of stuff. I felt very connected to all of it, and Kevin and I pieced it together in the studio. His work turned up the turbulence and whimsy of the album, which was what I was looking for.

What unique elements did he bring to the tracks he produced?

Daniel added some arrangements that surprised me in a good way—percussion where I hadn't considered it, strings and crashes and heart-wrenching piano parts, etc. I love letting other creative minds interpret my songs and expand them beyond what I can do alone! He and I have similarly experimental musical approaches, so he brought elements that made a lot of sense to me and were just what the songs needed.

The visuals for 'Surviving You' are striking. Can you share the inspiration behind the video and how it complements the song’s message?

The visuals for Surviving You complement the song's emotional intensity and edginess. I was seeing a more extreme kind of demolition for the video, like me fully breaking and smashing things with a big ax or something but we toned it down and whipped it together in a day. The video is partly me telling the story in the present with some memory flashbacks, conveyed by Sarah and I wrestling on the beach. I wanted the visuals to move around memory chaotically, as the song is narrating.

Your music often explores complex narratives. How do you balance personal storytelling with universal themes that resonate with listeners?

I think my personal storytelling is inherently universal, as I am exploring the whole spectrum of human emotion and writing about love and its intrinsic pain, risk, loss, grief, memory, childhood, self-reclamation, empowerment, triumph, acceptance, death, release, and so on and on. Each story resonates with someone out in the world, and I don't doubt that. My musical heroes are storytellers who have an ability to touch my own life with stories of theirs, and that's a tradition I strive to carry on. As a poet, I do generally leave my writing open and conceptual, some is more straight forward yet still offers a place for the listener to see their self.

How did your experiences during the creation of Nested in Tangles shape your perspective on familial relationships and personal growth?

Writing Nested helped me step into my truth like I had never before. I've struggled my whole life to affirm and validate my anger and pain, to just truly believe that I deserved and deserve better care. To believe that I can learn to trust and feel safe again. The internal work and creative work during this time and since then has helped me grow into a person with a deep sense of self-compassion, trust, and affirmation.

What are you most excited about as you perform these new songs live?

Many of the large ensemble pieces I have never performed live, so I feel excited to dig them out of the back of my psyche and embody them for the first time with strings and woodwinds and horns, etc. It is a challenging album, and I haven't ever performed it all the way through start to finish, so I'm excited and a little nervous to rise to the occasion.

How do you feel your music has evolved since your earlier releases, and what do you think has driven that evolution?

My music has evolved greatly as I've grown as a guitarist and composer. I think that has been mostly driven by plain-old practice and experimentation on the guitar, and collaboration. Working with my producer Kevin Copeland has been inspiring and expansive over the last few years, and I think our collaboration pushes me to try new things. I'm always trying to write something haven't heard before and come to him with "listen to this wild one!" I've only gotten weirder, and I don't see that changing.

What do you love right now?

I love being home after tour, I love apple cider, I love stew, I love turtlenecks, I love long hugs.

What do you hate right now?

I hate the pressure and urgency of capitalism, I hate money imposing restrictions on an artistic life, I hate genocide and war, I hate the men in power, I hate the shame and self-doubt that I'm always working through, I hate my credit card bill I can't pay off.

Name an album you’re still listening to from when you were younger and why it’s still important to you?

So many comfort albums I'm still spinning! But Bobby McFerrin's album Beyond Words is one my mom played all the time when I was a kid and I had the CD in my car in high school and I still listen to it every couple weeks. Timeless, genius album, music that connects me to my spirit in inexplicable ways.

When someone hears your music for the first time, what do you hope sticks with them?

I hope my music leaves listeners feeling expanded and liberated into new pathways and in deeper connection with themselves and their boldest, truest spirit. I hope that singers, guitarists, and poets can find inspiration in my unconventional approach to music, and let themselves explore new creative terrains.