Just days before graduating college in May of 2025, Bay Area native Olivia Austin released her debut EP as Operelly. The six songs on Handwriting Practice No. 1 mark the arrival of one of music’s most unique new voices. Merging together airy guitars and delicate samples, Olivia crafts songs that dance along the edges of indie, experimental, and alternative music. The resulting sound - dubbed “tiptoe music” by Olivia - is at once gorgeous, catchy, and haunting.
“My biggest inspirations were storybooks and poems with accompanied illustrations,” says Olivia. “I wrote lyrics that intentionally felt like nursery rhymes, but I still wanted the music to reflect the anxieties and broken relationships that I faced.”
Olivia is hard at work on her follow-up EP.
