Based out of Chicago, Anna Holmquist has been sharing music under the Ester moniker for a decade and counting, first as a solo project and more recently as a full band. The band’s debut album, Turn Around, was released back in the Spring of 2020, with obvious consequences, which gave the band plenty of time to start plotting their next move. Anna and their bandmates started 2023 with their first new material since their debut, double-A single Red Rover/Change Is Allowed. Today the band are announcing a new EP, Laundry, set for release later this year on Audiosport Records, as well as premiering the record’s title track.

As with all of the EP from which it is lifted, Laundry was recorded with Anna’s long-term collaborator, cellist Katelyn Cohen, creating a beautiful contrast between the more processed tones of Anna’s guitar runs, against the rich swells of Katelyn’s sonorous strings. The track was inspired by a slightly unlikely visitor attraction, as Anna recalls, “I wrote ‘Laundry’ after visiting the world’s largest laundromat in Berwyn, Illinois”. While not obviously about doing your washing, the song does have a sense of freshness and re-invigoration, Anna noting how, “it’s also about the unfolding, uncertain feeling when you begin to date someone new — where you start to ask yourself if they’re someone you could love, and someone who could love you, and you aren’t sure”.

To the fore throughout is Anna’s remarkable vocal, pitched somewhere between the melismatic quality of Kristine Leschper and the rich, velvety emotion of Squirrel Flower’s Ella Williams, as they sing of the buzzing excitement of a new relationship, “taking all the laundry down the stairs, picking out the outfit that I’ll wear, wondering what she’ll say to me tonight”. That initial thrill is tempered somewhat as they speak of, “little fighting in my heart, it hurts to start, it hurts to start”.

What better place for Ester to start their return than with a musing on new horizons and new opportunities, Laundry feels fresh and exciting, an artist of note embracing an exciting next phase, that might just be the start of something incredible for this most intriguing of songwriters.

Laundry EP is out in November via Audiosport Records. For more information on Ester visit https://estermusic.bandcamp.com/.