Portland indie-pop dreamweaver Gretta Seabird unfurls her debut EP ‘Cycling’ on September 5th, a tender collection stitched from fragments of life’s brightest and darkest moments.

Born from a long-distance collaboration, Jeremiah Brunnhoelzl’s ghostly Brooklyn guitar riffs drifted west to Lee McDonnell in Portland, where lyrics and melodies bloomed overnight. ‘Cycling’ is a meditation on love, loss, and renewal. The title track and its echo, ‘Goodbye for Now,’ trace McDonnell’s journey through pregnancy and heartbreaking loss, transforming pain into fragile beauty.

<a href="https://grettaseabird.bandcamp.com/album/cycling-ep">Cycling EP by Gretta Seabird</a>

“I love spontaneity of making songs”

The project’s origin was a self-imposed challenge with a tight, two-week turnaround. How did that rapid, almost frantic, pace influence the core and honesty of the songs, and did you find yourselves capturing a different kind of “little moment” than you might have with a more leisurely writing process?

I love participating in songwriting challenges because the hard deadlines push me to finish something and without that structure, it’s easy to let ideas slip away. Creativity often finds me in everyday or mundane moments like driving or hanging out with my dog, lil soundbites, the news, a conversation and those little fragments of life end up woven into my songs. It’s a mix of stream-of-consciousness and what the day happens to bring.

Lee, after losing your voice and feeling a loss of identity, how did you find the courage to re-engage with music, and did the experience of writing the EP become an act of recovery as much as one of creation?

Losing my voice after surgery was heartbreaking. I remember trying to sing alone in my car, and just breaking down because no sound would come out… it felt like I’d lost a part of myself. I could not sing my own songs….Singing has been so engrained into my life when i would sing in school and my mom would take me as a kid to singing contests at like a grocery store out in Massachusetts, to lesson, to choir, to funerals/weddings, open mic, karaoke, and sharing my own music.

A vocal doctor i went to had told me to never let a day go by without using my voice, so I found ways to recover at the time by cheering at Blazers games sitting in the 300’s, and privately belting anything out in my car during traffic even when it sounded rough. I took the time to learn all the words to Justin Beiber’s album, Justice. Slowly, it came back. I’m grateful for the recovery, and still singing.

The EP’s title track ‘Cycling’ captures the complex emotions of a positive pregnancy test, followed by the partner track “Goodbye for Now,” which addresses a miscarriage. The title “Cycling” itself suggests a continuous, repetitive process. Can you speak to how the title reflects not just the specific events, but the broader cycles of hope, loss, and creation that seem to define the human experience?

‘Cycling’ came from a deeply personal place where I was l thinking of the idea of cycles and transformation. Each song became a small vignette or portrait of a different version of myself in motion with each one spinning its own story.

You mentioned that music has “pulled you through in ways you could not with just talking.” Given that, what is the most profound thing a listener could understand about your story and music through this EP that words alone could never convey?

In day-to-day life, I sometimes struggle to articulate how I really feel. But when I’m writing a song, it just flows… like the song knows what it wants to say. There’s a rhythm and a movement to it that makes sense in a way words alone often don’t. This sounds cheesy but I feel like, when a song comes together quickly and easily, it feels like it was meant to be. Some of the best music can comes where your weren’t even focusing on structure, vibe, or anything-you’re just free styling. That ease/no-filter feeling brought a real sense of joy to the writing process.

With Jeremiah in Brooklyn and Lee in Portland, the project was forged across a physical distance. How did this geographical separation, and the asynchronous collaboration it required, shape the music itself? Did it create a sense of space or longing that found its way into the songs?

Working remotely with Jeremiah in Brooklyn and me in Portland felt familiar because we’d already been sending each other ideas and voice memos going on 10+ years in our own creative silos but this time we were working collectively and to our strengths. Each track he would respond with something totally unexpected but we knew our focus was to be: short, sweet & poppy. I loved that spontaneity of making our songs. In the studio, things would often take a complete turn where we’d go from a simple acoustic idea to a full production with layered sounds and bassy beats. Not every song made the cut, but the process felt alive, open, and full of discovery each time.

Klemen Breznikar

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