There’s something unsettling about absence—the way empty spaces can feel heavier than the things that once filled them. It’s a feeling that Minneapolis-based singer-songwriter Samia knows well, having experienced the “very quiet and sweet crowds” of Montreal during her last visit to the city. Now, as she prepares to return to Le Studio TD on May 25th as part of her upcoming North American tour, she’s bringing with her Bloodless, a third album that transforms this understanding of emptiness into her most haunting and cohesive artistic statement yet.
On Bloodless, Samia has crafted an entire sonic meditation on the paradox of absence, exploring how the things we don’t say, don’t show, and don’t become can shape us more profoundly than what we do. The album opens with “Bovine Excision,” a track that takes its title from one of the most perplexing unsolved mysteries of our time: the bloodless surgical removal of cattle organs found across rural landscapes, with no explanation for how or why. It’s a fitting entry point for an album that finds fascination in the inexplicable.
“I was drawn to unsolved mysteries and the power of absence,” Samia explains. “Sometimes what’s not there takes up the most space—like the total lack of blood at the scene of these cattle mutilations.”
This obsession with emptiness runs deeper than mere curiosity about unexplained phenomena. For Samia, it’s become a way of understanding her own relationship with identity and presence. Throughout Bloodless, she returns to the refrain “I want to be impossible”—a desire that speaks to something more complex than simple wish fulfillment. “It means I want to be unconstrained to my humanness,” she says, articulating a longing that feels both deeply personal and universally relatable.
The journey to Bloodless has been shaped by geography as much as by introspection. After spending her formative years in New York City, followed by stints in Nashville and Los Angeles, Samia has settled in Minneapolis, where she’s found both creative community and the space to examine the patterns that have defined her artistic evolution. “Totally!” she responds when asked if these different cities have shaped who she is. “Especially the music communities.”
It’s in Minneapolis that she’s deepened her collaborative relationship with producers Caleb Wright of The Happy Children and Jake Luppen of Hippo Campus. Their working dynamic has become essential to Samia’s creative process, built on a foundation of trust that extends beyond the studio. “I trust them as friends and also have always been a fan of theirs,” she notes. “I just trust their sensibilities and they’re good at reeling me in.”
This trust has allowed Samia to explore some of her most vulnerable territory yet. When asked about the moment during the album’s creation that felt especially personal, she points to “North Poles,” a track inspired by her friendship with fellow artist Raffaella. It’s one of many songs on Bloodless that examines the complexity of human connection through the lens of absence and presence.
The album’s unusual imagery—cattle mutilations, Diet Dr. Pepper, holes punched in venue walls—might seem disparate, but Samia’s fascination unites them with how meaning can emerge from emptiness. “Hole in a Frame,” the album’s contemplative centrepiece, references a section of wall at a Tulsa venue where Sid Vicious once punched a hole in 1978—an absence that has somehow become more significant than the presence it replaced.
This exploration of void versus substance extends to Samia’s examination of performance and authenticity. Interestingly, while she grapples with questions of realness versus fantasy throughout the album’s lyrics, she finds her most honest self emerging through song rather than conversation. “I feel more comfortable speaking honestly in songwriting than I do conversationally,” she admits, adding that “writing and singing are easier for me than talking to people.”
The physical nature of these songs is impossible to ignore. Bloodless shifts seamlessly from sparse folk arrangements to sweeping indie-pop epics, each track demanding to be felt as much as heard. When asked about whether she thinks about the physical impact of her music while writing, Samia points to “Spine Oil” as a moment where she particularly felt that bodily connection to the sound.
But perhaps nowhere is this physicality more evident than on “Fair Game,” a track that contains what Samia calls “a warning for myself too—it’s just about the futility of revenge.” The song’s central image—not getting your blood back—speaks to the irreversible nature of certain emotional investments, the way we can pour ourselves into situations and relationships without any guarantee of return.
Throughout Bloodless, there’s a delicate balance between darkness and levity, moments of genuine anguish punctuated by flashes of self-deprecating humour. This isn’t calculated—it’s simply how Samia processes the world. “I’m just always making fun of myself,” she says, revealing as much about her defensive mechanisms as her sense of humour.
The album concludes with “Pants,” a song that manages to find existential weight in the mundane act of shopping, questioning identity through the simple premise of clothing purchases we later regret. It’s vintage Samia—finding the profound in the everyday, the cosmic in the personal.
As Bloodless continues to receive critical acclaim, with Stereogum calling it “Samia’s third and best LP” and praising how it “affirms her as a true talent deserving of her place in the firmament of accessible, alt-slanted singer-songwriter music,” the experience of performing these songs live has already begun to shift their meaning. “Fair Game has been a lot of fun,” she notes, suggesting that songs born from contemplation of absence and impossibility have found new life in the presence of audiences.
If Bloodless had a scent, Samia says it would smell like “swamp”—earthy, mysterious, alive with unseen organisms and ancient secrets. It’s a fitting metaphor for an album that finds life in decay, meaning in mystery, and presence in absence. In a recent moment of philosophical reflection, she’s been fixated on the etymology of heresy, noting that “heresy is derived from a word that means choice.” It’s the kind of observation that perfectly encapsulates the mindset behind Bloodless—finding profound meaning in unexpected places, questioning accepted truths, and choosing to exist in the spaces between certainty and doubt.
With Bloodless, Samia has created her most cohesive statement yet about the strange power of emptiness, the allure of the impossible, and the ongoing challenge of being fully present in a world that often rewards us for being anything but. It’s an album that doesn’t just explore absence—it transforms it into something vital, necessary, and ultimately very much alive.
Samia plays Le Studio TD on May 25 – BUY TICKETS
