June McDoom – Follow The Light

June McDoom’s debut full-length album Follow The Light inhabits a dreamlike space where folk harmony, reggae rhythm and dub experimentation meet. Made slowly and by hand with her longtime partner Evan Wright, the record draws on family memory, analogue sound and the feeling of moving between familiar worlds. Its arrangements are restrained but richly textured, allowing McDoom’s voice and guitar to remain at the centre while layers of rhythm, echo and atmosphere gather around them.

McDoom grew up in a Jamaican household near the Florida Everglades, surrounded by extended family, communal care and music. Her father, a carpenter and dedicated student of sound, built his own speakers and maintained sound systems across the family home. While bass travelled through the floor, she listened privately to folk records and became fascinated by harmony. Her grandfather, the respected mento musician Colin Smith, played banjo and guitar, built rumba boxes and helped preserve Jamaica’s oldest acoustic folk form. He also placed a guitar in her hands, creating a direct link between family tradition and her own developing musical language.

Across twelve tracks, Follow The Light blends those foundations with influences including Dionne Warwick, Minnie Riperton, Pentangle, the Wall of Sound and the washed, celestial guitars of Cocteau Twins’ Victorialand. The lead single “Without You” captures the approach particularly clearly, pairing luminous vocals with an arrangement that feels delicate, spacious and quietly powerful. Songs including “Human Angel,” “Memory,” “Dream Dub,” “Grandpa” and the title track explore inheritance, identity and the many versions of ourselves shaped by the people who came before us.

McDoom has already built a growing reputation through backing vocals for Big Thief, live appearances and support tours with artists including Clairo, Jessica Pratt and Brittany Howard. Her NTS residency and participation in Rough Trade’s On the Rise programme have further highlighted a distinctive artist whose work crosses genre boundaries without feeling forced.

Available on black vinyl and a limited clear pink pressing, Follow The Light is an immersive debut suited to listeners of alternative folk, dub, dream-pop and exploratory singer-songwriter music. It is intimate, carefully constructed and rooted in the idea that the future self can be another ancestor waiting to be met.