Born and raised in Indiana, Stephanie Lambring got her start as a songwriter on Nashville’s Music Row, but after five years of composing for other artists, she walked away from the music business entirely until legendary songwriter Tom Douglas encouraged her to return to her craft, this time for herself. Lambring’s debut as an artist, 2020’s Autonomy, was a critical smash, prompting Rolling Stone to hail her “John Prine-esque observation” and NPR to declare her “one of Nashville’s most fearless young singer-songwriters.”

Lambring’s much-anticipated follow-up, Hypocrite, is an even more remarkable work of self-reflection, one that finds comfort in facing the uncomfortable head-on. The arrangements are lush and hypnotic, with Lambring’s breathy vocals floating atop a sea of dreamy synthesizers and shimmering guitars, and the writing is as raw and vulnerable as it gets, confronting everything from religion and trauma to body image and motherhood with unflinching honesty. The result is a record that lands somewhere between Phoebe Bridgers and Alanis Morrissette as it looks for the best by reckoning with the worst, an album full of love and grace and compassion that aims to remind us that imperfection and humanity go hand in hand.