BOULDER COUNTY — "Tarantula," the newest studio release from the indie folk rock project Trouble’s Braids, now fully cements the unit as a full band.
Originally a folk duo consisting of life partners Emily Pennington and Oliver Franklin, they have since added drummer Ryan O’Malley and bassist Jordan Smith to the lineup, although they are not featured on every song in the EP.
“It’s a funny little Frankenstein of some tracks we were slowly recording with other friends playing bass or drums or producing,” says Pennington. “Slowly, we’re integrating these new band members, and we’re so thrilled with this EP.”
Pennington and Franklin started the unit in 2024 after meeting in Colorado. Pennington started learning guitar when she moved from suburban Texas to Boulder, and Franklin attended grad school in Boulder after years as a professional musician in Seattle.
“I feel like as a duo, especially in Boulder County, people want to see something that’s very acoustic or gentle,” Pennington recalls. “I think Oliver and I were always a little bit too rock and roll to fit into the box that a duo kind of paints you into.”
Ultimately, they focused on writing songs with a richer sound, releasing their debut EP, "The Big Tourist," in 2025. They experimented with percussion in the project, focusing on serious subject matter with a backbeat to engage listeners.
“We continued to create songs about late-stage capitalism and addiction and love and the darker side of the human condition, but really wanting them to have a strong groove, a good hook, and a strong throughline,” says Pennington.
Pennington feels that "Tarantula," which came out on June 5, is an amalgamation of the band’s sound and efforts to grow over the last year, with the title embracing the darker themes of the human experience (along with being a nod to a collection of poetry written by Bob Dylan).
“We like to joke that we’re very much a dance-through-the-darkness type of band,” says Pennington. “Music has this incredible capacity to pierce the veil of normalcy. It can create this amazing communal feeling of validation, of things being okay, of catharsis, and I think togetherness through the darkness, which is what we probably need most of all right now.”
You can find "Tarantula" wherever you get your music. Be sure to keep an eye out for upcoming Trouble’s Braids shows in the Peak to Peak area by heading to troublesbraidsmusic.com.
