Blessing at SXSW 2022 in Austin, photo by Tyler Raye

Rising artist Blessing has just released her debut the girl next door EP, which is out today.

The newly released project includes the Houston singer's previously released tracks "boys like you" and "girl like me" as well as new songs "freak," "rage" and "19 and peaked." 

"Each of these songs are really the things I never bothered saying being that I felt no one was listening," says Blessing of the new project. "That truly gave me the advantage to writing everything I was feeling at the time. I just thought well since no one is ever going to hear these I might as well say it all, regardless of how desperate, embarrassing, or unpleasant my words may be.”

The singer recently made her debut at SXSW in Austin, which marked the festival's first in-person outing since 2019 due to Covid, which scrapped the 2020 event suddenly as cases surged globally just days before SXSW's start. Coincidentally, Blessing talked with Variance during the fest about her own pandemic experience, as she was forced to finish her senior year of high school remotely.

She joked that, because her school didn't host a senior prom for her class, it was actually somewhat of a relief. "Maybe it's a good thing that prom didn't happen," she said. "That way it's not that I didn't get asked. It's that I just never had prom!"

Check out our chat with Blessing below and hear the full EP now above.

Blessing, photo by Tyler Raye
Blessing, photo by Tyler Raye
Blessing, photo by Tyler Raye
Blessing, photo by Tyler Raye
Blessing, photo by Tyler Raye
Blessing, photo by Tyler Raye
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Blessing, photo by Tyler Raye
Blessing, photo by Tyler Raye
Blessing, photo by Tyler Raye
Blessing, photo by Tyler Raye
Blessing, photo by Tyler Raye
Blessing, photo by Tyler Raye
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