Grace Graber

In many ways, Grace Graber is the voice of a rising movement full of people who believe that maybe both faith and mental health matter — in fact, maybe they’re inextricably intertwined.

With a pop punk sound in the playful yet heartfelt tradition of Avril Lavigne, Grace’s musical message runs in tandem with her viral social media presence. Her candid conversations about mental health, music, and her faith resonate with followers who immediately feel a kinship with her genuine heart. Part of that authenticity stems from the fact that Grace Graber has lived a journey very similar to her listeners.
“This ministry, the rest of my music, none of this is about me,” Grace is quick to say. “It’s about what God wants to do in His people, specifically through mental health. That’s an epidemic right now. We need to be talking about it more. I’m not doing music for me, to get on radio, to get signed. I’m doing music to save lives.”

Not too long ago, Grace Graber was a suicidal teenager struggling with PTSD from severe bullying. Music gave her the ability to survive— specifically, a Hawk Nelson song that met her where she was. In a glorious full-circle moment, Hawk Nelson’s founding vocalist Jason Dunn would later feature on Grace’s song “This One’s For You,” a track from the Conversations EP that was written for anyone in a place like the one she walked through.

“I feel like God opened more doors to healing,” Grace reflects. “It was like opening up a wound and forcing myself to feel some trauma that I didn't realize I could still feel. Now that I have a therapist and a team, now that I’ve done this collaboration and I'm in a healthy place, I'm able to find resolution to it all for my teenage self, who is content and happy and feels valued.”Songs like “The Light” and “Do It For Me” speak to some of that possibility of healing, with Grace being fixed on the core message: “if God can do it for me, He can do it for anybody.”

She has reason to say that. The road to get from suicidal teenager to successful independent artist has come with its fair share of ups and downs. Grace freely admits, “I wasn’t supposed to do music. I was in a car accident 5 years ago. I couldn’t even play guitar.”

But then Grace heard about an international songwriting competition— and she won. That resulted in a trip to Nashville, where she’d meet a producer who would help create her first songs. As her music began releasing through 2020, the songs quickly earned her a We Love Christian Music Award for the Next Big Thing. Then, her honest confessions about mental health started going viral on Instagram.
“Weird things have just collided in my life that have not made sense,” Grace says.

The quickly-catching fire of her momentum led to the April 2023 release of Grace’s Conversations EP, which included the Jason Dunn vocal feature and a song cowritten with Chris Cleveland of Stars Go Dim. Now living in Nashville, playing shows with a band of friends around her and thriving as she independently grows her platform, Grace is determined to map out the blueprint for a new kind of musician.

“I am actively singing about my mental health and faith as I’m working on my mental health and faith. I just want to fight for breakthrough, not only in emotional and mental healing, but also in the music industry,” Grace says. “I want to fight for a breakthrough of inclusiveness. I feel like as a punk artist, I'm the right person to do it, even when it’s lonely. I want to be a safe place in Christian music. I don't want to be a place where people feel like they have to prove themselves in any way, shape or form.”

Grace adds, “I’ve come so far in just a couple years. It shows me how much God has had his hand on this, because none of this could have happened without that. It’s just an example of if God can do this, He can literally do anything.”

In addition to her music and social media presence, Grace is a podcaster on the NewReleaseToday podcast network with her show The Grace Graber Podcast. You can connect with Grace across platforms at https://linktr.ee/gracegrabermusic.