The realest-deal storyteller in indie-rock today is the Tampa-born, New Orleans-based singer/songwriter Thomas Dollbaum, and Birds of Paradise is his most powerful and dynamic work yet. Following up his critically acclaimed Wellswood (Big Legal Mess, 2022) and Drive All Night EP (Dear Life Records, 2025), Birds of Paradise is a goodbye letter to lost loved ones and former selves. These songs find Dollbaum searching for acceptance in the transient in-between places: Florida’s pine flatwoods, backroads leading to I-95, where birds fly across the water. And even though the ghosts of his alt-county predecessors Townes and Molina are definitely present, on Birds of Paradise, Dollbaum emerges from their shadows–waving to the past, sounding all the more like himself.