Loma + Shearwater

Loma and Shearwater seem fated to tour together. Both feature songwriter Jonathan Meiburg and engineer/producer Dan Duszynski; both have their roots in Austin, Texas; both are released by Seattle's Sub Pop records. And both have a third member named Emily (Emily Lee in Shearwater, Emily Cross in Loma). But they're different in the profound ways that only siblings can be. Cross's calm and enveloping voice is the heart of Loma, whose pastoral, mesmerizing 2018 debut was miles away from Shearwater's extroverted Jet Plane and Oxbow, released the previous year. Since then, each group has produced two more albums: Loma followed their self-titled first album with Don't Shy Away (2020) and How Will I Live Without A Body? (2023), while Shearwater released The Great Awakening (2022) and this year's The New World (2026).

Neither group has played live since 2018-which Meiburg insists was an accident. "The pandemic scrambled everything," he says, "and members of both groups left the country. Suddenly putting together a tour felt almost impossible, and it took a while to come back from that." So why perform together now? "Well, touring's way more expensive these days," Meiburg admits, "and we needed to save money." Cross laughs and agrees-but says it also appealed to her as an artistic challenge. "We've got six musicians, and we play different roles in the groups," she says, "so it's like being in a theater company putting on two separate plays."