Lia Pappas-Kemps + Rachel Bobbitt

ON SALE FRIDAY MARCH 20 @ 10AM ET

For Lia Pappas-Kemps , expressing herself through art has always been second nature. This is evident in the confident, natural presence the Toronto-born singer brings every time she steps on stage, stemming all the way back to the beginning of her career in music. In 2021 and 2022, she launched her music career through a series of singles, including the grunge-inflected “Jinx” and the gorgeous, swooning ballads “Sad in Toronto” and “Object at Best". In her emotionally unsparing, sensuous and critically acclaimed debut EP, Gleam, her intricate sound comes across, demonstrating influences from throwback alt-rock to ’70s troubadours to modern indie rock but never truly resembling anyone but herself. With each release she continues to trace her progress while finding her songwriting voice. But nothing about her music is underdeveloped. Instead, every new track plots a crystalline moment in an engaging coming-of-age story—one that will feel compelling for anyone for whom desire has felt as heavy as the weight of the world.

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“The ocean does not care about you at all,” declares Rachel Bobbitt . “That’s what makes something truly awesome—it could and will exist, with or without you.” The ocean looms, uncaring yet vital, conceptually and actually on Bobbitt’s debut full-length LP, Swimming Towards the Sand . Raised in the windswept Annapolis Valley of Nova Scotia, Bobbitt roots herself in the memories and milestones of home more than a decade after her voice first found an audience through the lens of internet virality. Growing up in a musical household, where her mom’s side hosted kitchen fiddle parties, Bobbitt was surrounded by music from the beginning. At just 16 years old, she’d amassed a large Vine following, performing covers and originals to an audience of 400,000 strong, leading to Shorty Award nominations and being crowned by Buzzfeed as one of 13 Amazing Singers You Should Follow On Vine. She now looks back at that time with nuance, feeling both reinforced in her abilities by the response and, at the same time, overwhelmed by the onslaught of opinions—opinions on her career, appearance, voice, image—at an age when she was still figuring out what those things meant for herself. A dozen years later, after studying Jazz and Vocal Pedagogy at the renowned Humber College, learning the rules of the road, and navigating the music industry from her home base in Toronto, Bobbitt arrives at Swimming Towards the Sand with an unwavering sense of purpose. It’s an album that revisits her roots with the clarity of perspective, the wisdom of experience, and the lessons of resilience that can only come with time. It looks back with an eye both clear and nostalgic and reflects her memories via sharply contemporary music. A natural progression from Bobbitt’s collection of singles and EPs, including The Ceiling Could Collapse (2022) and The Half We Still Have (2023), Swimming Towards the Sand is her most cohesive and expansive work to date: a poignant exploration of grief, girlhood, memory, and return. It centres itself around memories and dreams, and how one can often feel interchangeable with the other. It is only through careful observation and steady rumination that we start to draw meaning and distinctions. The album is full is such reflections—and like the ocean, turns discarded bottles into frosted glass, these memories and dreams of loss, grief, and girlhood become something tangible and true. Throughout Swimming Towards the Sand , Bobbitt returns again and again to the ocean—not just as a symbol, but as part of her internal landscape. “Having the water be so consistent and impartial to you, and terrifying and beautiful,” she says, adding, “it is such a strong presence for me.” The album is textured by the loss, yet it resists despair. It offers a return not just to home, but to self: a reclamation of the things that remain after the tide recedes. Bobbitt describes it as her most fully realized work, and it shows.

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