“Our new album was born between two catastrophic weather events,” says Sylvan Esso’s Amelia Heath on the genesis of the duo's latest record, Ow ∞.
“When we tried to kick our writing into high gear back in 2024, North Carolina was hit by a hurricane and we got wrapped up in it,” adds producer Nick Sanborn. He engineered the huge, 100+ track Cardinals at the Window benefit compilation album for free, and Amelia volunteered at an aid relief centre.
“Then we went to LA planning to work with some friends in January 2025 and the fires disrupted everything. Those two things, despite delaying the serious work, just ended up shaping the entire album.”
The result is Ow ∞, the couple’s first LP since 2022, a project created, reimagined and revisited in Betty’s, a secluded off-grid studio in the woods near Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Inspired as much by the fallout from our volatile times as by their thirst for collaboration (there’s a broad cast of characters involved), the 12 tracks on their fifth record are some of their most immediate and messy. Despite their commercial success, Grammy nominations and a hectic touring schedule, the pair are restlessly creative, perpetually searching for fresh stimulation.
I’d much rather make something that I love and everyone hates than something I feel mediocre about
“When we were working on our first two or three records, it was so hard and painful for me to write,” says Amelia. “It was a mixture of me feeling like a big fake or what I was coming up with was boring. Despite the disruption in the wider world, the process behind this record felt more grounded and easeful.”
“We’ve had some success but the only pressure I feel now is from ourselves,” adds Nick. “Can I make something that feels vital and the favourite thing I’ve ever made for me? I’d much rather make something that I love and everyone hates than something I feel mediocre about.”
Nick and Amelia first met more than 15 years ago playing a show in Milwaukee, before realising they were interested in working together.
“We became friends on Twitter when Twitter was a nice place to be, then I asked Nick for a remix for my first band Mountain Man,” recalls Amelia. “He did it, it was great and it led to more.”
Bonding over a love for Kendrick Lamar’s Good Kid, MAAD City, Fiona Apple’s The Idler Wheel…, Rihanna and Jimmy Tamborello’s production for the Postal Service, they continued to connect by email until Hurricane Sandy hit America’s East Coast in 2012 and led to Amelia leaving New York.
“I was working and writing out of my apartment in Redhook, Brooklyn, then this huge hurricane arrived, so I decided to move to Durham where Nick was,” she says. “We made our first music in his rental which is now the house we own.”
“I was working in this abandoned tannery where my friend still has a studio,” Nick explains. “It’s this small practice space studio in this weird old warehouse. But this was where we did Hey Mama, Could I Be and Play it Right from our debut record, with this great reverb out in the hallway.”
The combination of Amelia’s vocals with Nick’s electronic production has proved to be a winning one, finding a devoted audience and picking up two Grammy nominations for Best Dance/Electronic Album for What Now and Free Love. Since then, Sylvan Esso have become self-sufficient, building their own studio space, launching the Psychic Hotline label and establishing the Good Moon Festival.
“We built a studio partly because we needed somewhere to work that wasn’t our house,” says Amelia. “Studios also tend to be isolating environments, you’ve rented a space with an engineer and you’re just a guest there, so you feel alienated.”
“I’m not a gear person,” she continues. “I find it generally distracting, but I think I find that because my instrument is just myself, the studio is designed specifically in that way for me. The mixing position is with your back to a big live room, but usually people track inside the room - so it’s open, everyone tends to be in the same space.”
“We wanted to create somewhere where everyone felt they had some ownership over it, everyone’s opinion is wanted and desired. It’s also a community effort there, music was made by multiple people in a space full of light and windows. I’m finding that I’m less interested in perfection and more in reality of how we work.”
The communal feel looms large over the eclectic collection of tracks that make up Ow ∞. TJ Maiani, Joe Westerlund, Glenn Kotche, Jake Luppen, Jenn Wasner, and Nick all provide percussion while James Mapley-Brittle provided production assistance alongside Daniel Aged and Bon Iver collaborator BJ Burton, among others.
“Our Ocean Way HR3.5 speakers have played an important role in shaping our sound among so many contributors,” says Nick. “These are beautiful speakers with a really wide dispersion pattern. There are better speakers with a narrow mix position but with these, you can turn them on and everyone sitting in the area will have an idea of what is happening in the mix. It’s a very inclusive speaker for a group which is a big element of everything we did.”
There are two distinct spaces within the studio - a large main room and a smaller, production room - and both have their own vibes, according to the duo. “The big room is clean and orderly and the patchbays are neat while the smaller room is the weird jam chaos zone,” laughs Nick. “It’s always a mess and it always needs to be like this. But having both is really important to me.”
Ow ∞’s creation came in the wake of an extensive touring period. Amid the record’s creation were various natural catastrophes and a revolving cast of collaborators, and while writing the duo were constantly conscious of how the music would be translated on stage.
“Now we have a very solid touring side to what we do in the States and the UK,” says Amelia. “So in some ways, the job becomes more about how you can surprise yourself - otherwise you’re in danger of becoming bored and the music gets boring too.”
“The show cannot become a museum piece,” says Nick. “Seriously, you can just kill me if that was to happen.”
The pair’s relationship with the new project is still percolating. For Amelia, the album belongs to her and Nick until release, with its highlights constantly changing once others have had the chance to absorb it. Meanwhile, Nick believes that some of the best moments of their musical career feature on Ow ∞.
“I’m really proud of Concrete Glen,” he says. “Ever since I was a kid I’ve always wanted to do something that has a big, never-been-done-before sample drop [it features a sample of Sigur Ros’ Svefn-g-englar]. It just fits with a lot of the music I listened to when I was younger, I’m really proud of how that turned out. It’s really unique to us while also being reverential.”
Plastic Sword features an earworm melody, processed vocals and a thumping kick drum as its rhythmical backbone. “It’s a crown jewel of what we were pushing, it feels like the most ‘us’ thing we’ve ever done,” Amelia states.
“Suno isn’t coming up with that anytime soon,” continues Nick. “There are a lot of moments where I feel the reference points are very obvious but what comes out of it is new, something that hasn’t happened before.”
Over the years, the pair have also collaborated with a variety of artists from John Cale to Tuneyards, Maggie Rogers, Moses Sumney and more, all of whom have shaped how they write and produce themselves.
“It’s always interesting to see how other people work in the studio, it’s like someone showing you their underwear,” says Amelia. “It is really interesting for us as a pair of music-makers,” adds Nick. “I’m always looking at how others do things so I can apply anything new to what we do too.”
Sylvan Esso removed their music from Spotify in September 2025 with the decision motivated as a protest at the platform's practices and former CEO Daniel Ek’s investments. Amelia also feels that streaming has negatively impacted how we engage with full–length releases.
“I sound like an ancient grump now, but I find the way it has changed how people consume music really terrifying,” she states. “I hate that no one knows who they are listening to now. A song is something they listen to for a week, then it is gone, and there’s no ability to sit with a record.”
Both are also uneasy with where Spotify’s profits have headed outside of the platform and sought to spark a conversation about alternative ways to connect with fans.
“I don’t have a problem with the concept of streaming, I have a problem with Daniel Ek,” says Nick. “I was tired of feeling like a frog in a pot and not realising the water was getting hot.”
“I think, for a lot of us, there are many terrifying things happening in the world right now, it leads everyone to this state of numbness and feeling like the bad guys winning is inevitable - and there’s nothing we can do about it - the truth is that this is not true, we can tell them to go fuck themselves any time we want.”
“The goal was not getting other artists to remove their music from Spotify - which is a logistically and financially tricky thing to do,” he continues. “Instead, we wanted the average person who listens to music to consider where they were getting it from and change their streaming service. I would also like to plug Ahmed Muin’s record, Life is Hard as Mud - Songs from the Gaza Strip, 2024-25. This is a bunch of field recordings of him singing along to drones and children in Gaza.”
While the duo prepare for an extensive tour and a new edition of their Good Moon festival, they also have advice around the creative process for aspiring producers.
“The latest thing I’m coming back to is all you can do is work out if you like what you create, then keep on pursuing this,” Amelia says. “You need to dig this trench to see what is under it - this is what I’m interested in - not reference points but the excavation of discovery.”
For Nick, in what he perceives as an increasingly isolated time, scenes are more important than ever. It’s an energy they have embodied and invested in with their music and beyond.
“Do everything you can to be a part of a scene, get on the discords, go to the places, do the things and be the person you want to come to your gigs,” he says. “Community and fellowship is the ultimate secret weapon against all forms of fascism. And in these times, feeding your local scene and being part of it is more important than ever.”
Pre-order Ow ∞ on Sylvan Esso's website.
