The world was already coming apart in Vérité's life before the COVID pandemic became the latest shoe to drop this past winter.

By the time the singer-songwriter was forced to call off her sold-out tour due to the national emergency, she was mourning the end of a long-term relationship and with it the loss of her home. With few options, she retreated to her parents' house and wasted little time getting back to work, completing her forthcoming EP, New Limbs, Volume 1, with some of her most divergent music yet.

"My tour got canceled halfway through, so essentially that album cycle got shut down," she tells Q104.3 New York's QN'A. "There was this sense that I need new material to move forward, so I spent a lot of time writing, doing a lot more production, throwing this idea to the wall."

The first new track to emerge was "younger women" this past August. Stark in production, slow-jam in tempo and lyrically as fierce as anything in her formidable catalog, "younger women" is classic Vérité in its jilted conception, but an exciting new path in its execution for an artist coming into her own in every stage of songcraft.

Strange times bring new opportunities for those keen to dig them up. Vérité has been honing her craft in isolation these past six months, putting her fingerprints on each aspect of her new music — from writing to arranging to mixing — and grasping new breaths of independence with each step forward.

New Limbs, Vol. 1 is unlike any prior Vérité release in that it's a bit like all of them and yet not really like any one of them.

Whereas "younger women" succeeds with its dejected wit, New Limbs' second single, "i'll take the blame," is a genuine ballad. The contrast of the two tracks, which encompass the latter half of Vol. 1, might have given Vérité pause a year or two ago but no longer. If it comes from her, and it's good, it's good enough to put her name on.

"It’s this idea that I am a cohesive thread that can tie everything together and then I can do whatever the f—k I want, so long as it’s genuine and feels like me," she says. "That’s the current exploration that I’m on."

Read the full QN'A with Vérité below!

Keep up with her on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.

Listen to "i'll take the blame" in the player above. Pre-save New Limbs, Vol. 1 here.

Mel Taylor

About Mel Taylor