2024 Artist

For Willi, singing is a form of healing. He believes that by singing together, we can begin to reckon with the inevitability of human suffering and grow in love. On his latest album, Critterland, he invites us all to join him: “If we allow ourselves to sing together, there’s a release of sadness, maybe even a communal one. And so for me personally, singing, like the literal act of thinking through suffering, is really freeing,” he says.

Rooted in the eclectic and collective world of his live shows, Critterland takes up where his sophomore album, Peculiar, Missouri, left off. It transforms Peculiar’s big tent into a Critterland menagerie, letting loose the weirdos he gathered together. The album is a wild romp through the backwaters of his mind and America, lingering in the odd corners of human nature to visit obscure oddballs, dark secrets, and complicated truths about the beauty and pain of life and love.

Produced by the GRAMMY Award-nominated Darrell Scott and set to be released on January 26, 2024, by Signature Sounds, Critterland considers where we come from and where we are going. Willi takes on human suffering through stories about forbidden love, loss, generational trauma, addiction, and suicide. He believes that by processing the traits and trauma we inherit, he can reach a deeper understanding of what it means to succeed and to exist.