To experience Anterra’s music is to experience energy in motion.
Her songs don’t just tell stories; they embody them, conjuring worlds and offering listeners space for catharsis and connection. With a crystalline voice that soars between ghostly falsetto and rich, resonant low tones, the singer/songwriter crafts music that is as earthly as it is otherworldly – grounded in raw feeling, yet draped in myth, dream, and fantasy. Her sophomore album Eyes on Trees is, in her own words, “an existential fairytale” – a theatrical, expansive, and deeply cleansing collection chronicling a journey of reflection, transformation, and return to self.
“They come out intuitive and organic, like incantations.”
“Everyone always uses the word ethereal up front,” Anterra shares. Yet, the singer/songwriter refuses to put her ever-evolving songwriting style in one box. With a breathtaking vocal range and a playfulness to her delivery, her music defies simple categorization. For her, these songs are channeled – they tend to be born in one fell swoop, or not at all. That intuitive, otherworldly quality is what gives her work its potency: songs that function as spell, sermon, and sanctuary, guiding listeners through their own forests of grief, growth, and rebirth.
Born to a name blessed by Buddhist monks – terra for earth, an- for transcending it – Anterra embodies that duality. She grew up a classically trained violinist, taught herself guitar, and gradually leaned into her self-described “witchy prog rock inclinations.” Her debut LP These Things Take Time introduced her as a weaver of lush, harmony-rich dreamscapes; with Eyes on Trees, she leans into theatricality and psychedelia, embracing whimsy, myth, and play as healing forces.
The record begins in constraint and ends in liberation. The hushed, haunting opening track “Eight of Swords” casts a spell to break free of self-made prisons, while spirited, emotion-fueled songs like “Cellophane” and “Reflections” confront cycles of guilt and grief, inviting softness and surrender. The lush, light-filled lead single “Shore of the Sun” finds Anterra dragging herself out of the muck of self-doubt and into love’s embrace.
“The lesson I’ve learned again and again is that letting go of control is the only way to regain it. By trusting in love and in self, taking that risk, releasing fully into the powers larger than myself that I could never possibly control like the ocean, only then can I embrace the power within me.”
The album’s gentle finale, “Only Membranes,” captures her acceptance of the self as fluid, permeable, and whole: messy and complicated, but enough as it is. “Many potent forces all about, and I’m still me,” she sings, her delicate voice the last thing ringing out as the song – and album – come to their final rest.
Spiritually, Eyes on Trees embodies on record what Anterra’s live shows evoke in person. Onstage, she channels her own form of energy work – embodying songs so fully that performance becomes catharsis for both artist and audience.
“I was so honored to have someone tell me they cried during my performance, that it was just what they needed. That’s when I know I’ve offered a space for release.”
With Eyes on Trees, Anterra invites listeners to mythologize their own lives – to see their struggles not as traps, but as thresholds. Ethereal, evocative, and entrancing, her music is both mirror and guide: a reminder that even in our darkest forests, there’s always a path home.