A Chiming Back interview, finding its new home at Sweet Sweet Music Blog.

Karla Kane describes her songs as windows. Small ones, carefully made — you look through them and find yourself inside a world that is unmistakably hers: botanical, seasonal, slightly haunted, and shot through with an unexpected warmth. On Concerns of Wasp and Willow, the sixth album by Northern California’s The Corner Laughers, that world feels more fully realized than ever. Released on Big Stir Records on March 27, 2026, it is a record that begins in a small detail and pulls slowly outward — like a camera finding its frame.

The band — Kane (vocals, ukulele), Khoi Huynh (bass, piano, guitars), KC Bowman (guitars, keyboards) and Charlie Crabtree (drums) — have been crafting their literate, handcrafted folk pop together since the early 2000s. Concerns of Wasp and Willow arrives five years after their pandemic-era Temescal Telegraph, and finds them doing something quietly courageous: releasing something tender and precise into a world that seems to reward neither.

We spoke to Karla Kane about windows, details, and what it means to let a record go.

Your songs feel built from very small, precise details — both lyrically and in the instrumentation. Is it a way of writing, or a way of seeing the world?

I suppose songwriting is a reflection of a way of seeing the world — songs are like little windows. Often my songs seem to start from a small detail and then expand outward, like a camera pulling to a wider shot I guess. We definitely do try to put care into the details.

Listening to Concerns of Wasp and Willow while the world around me seems to be getting louder and cruder — I wonder, how does it feel to release something this tender and precise?

With so much going on in the world, and so many important issues, sometimes it feels a bit silly to even spend time on something like this, or to hope it reaches anyone. But on the other hand, in terms of a louder and cruder world, we’re proud to release something more gentle and thoughtful, too. It might not get much attention but we hope those it does reach will feel it is worthwhile.

The artwork has such a distinctive, immediately recognizable language — it feels like it inhabits the same world as the songs. Is that unity between music and image something you consciously pursue? Or is it more that you tend to draw people around you who feel the same things?

The artwork was created by our dear and brilliant friend Jennifer Rae Atkins, who is currently based in the Netherlands, and I’m so glad you see it as inhabiting the same world as the songs.

I called the songs windows earlier on and I think of the album cover as a visual window into the sonic world of the album, absolutely.

It is something we consciously pursue — I shared not only some of the songs themselves with Jennifer as she was working on the art but also some ideas and imagery that I felt were key.

And then she worked her magic to bring it all to visual life!

Your songs feel like glimpses into the way you see the world. And then you bring them to the rest of the band. How does it go from there?

Yes, whichever of us is the songwriter (me in most of the cases on this album, but there is also a song by Khoi written with our friend Helen Luker and one written by KC) has a demo with the music, lyrics and any production ideas.

Once it’s in the studio with the band, it is further refined and evolves into something more, with all of our fingerprints on it.

The first reviews are coming in. Do they still reach you — or does a record feel finished and separate from you by the time it’s out in the world?

They often do reach us. We’re very thankful for the folks who take time to review and share our work and to Big Stir Records for doing so much to build community! It doesn’t feel separate from us at this point — later on we will get some distance from it, perhaps, but for now I feel very closely connected to it.