“It’s a pretty simple story,” Maddy Kirgo says. “This album was meant to bring me joy and I hope that, when people listen to it, they feel good.” It’s been seven years since Kirgo dropped an album when she released Another Love Song independently on Bandcamp in 2017. “That was something I recorded because I was busking at the time and I wanted a record that matched what I was doing on the street,” she says. Around the same time, Kirgo was trying to start a honky tonk band and wrote “Trading Partners” as an exercise in crafting a classic- sounding country song. But what started as practice has become a centerpiece of Kirgo’s new album—and Gar Hole Records debut—Shadow on My Light, a 10-song wonderment that stretches the elasticity of country music into the realms of indie pop through a tapestry of sentimentality, grief, and circuit-breaker songwriting.