Artist Spotlight: Meet Roxy Rawson
Punk Head: You describe the single as inspired by The Three Ravens, which is a story of loss and transformation. What drew you to that particular fairytale?
Roxy Rawson: I find this fairytale full of dark and light together, like most fairytales, but this one in particular the contrast is so stark.
A stepmother who's also a witch, casts a spell on her step children and turns them into ravens, all of them, except one: her stepdaughter. The daughter escapes and in order to break the spell cast on her brothers, she promises she will not speak, for 3 years, 3 months and 3 days.
The plot unfolds around this promise and it's so full of drama and hope.
Punk Head: Nature seems to play a central role in your healing and creativity. What is it about the woods that feels like a refuge or mirror for your emotional world?
Roxy Rawson: Nature is so pure, full of natural beauty, but ugliness too. But even in the ugliness, there is still beauty. Opposition is found in nature, as it is in human nature. And yet in nature, for humans there is often great peace and solace possible to find, without the demands that opposition usually places on us on our energy except to receive. I find nature deeply restorative because of this. It feels like it contains a reflection of both human nature and the stillness of our consciousness that just observes and just is.
Punk Head: “I Found a Place in the Woods” is your first glimpse of Bright Star. What connects this single to the wider story of the album?
Roxy Rawson: I guess the wider story of the album is celebrating human nature as well as recognizing spiritual nature. So often in life, we judge negative emotions or vulnerability as being undesired and less than, and I want to celebrate the full range of what makes us human and also recognize the magic in us even being here in the first place, and recognize the magical nature of our being, beyond human emotion, thought or judgment.
Punk Head: Having once been part of London’s anti-folk movement, how does your creative voice today differ from that early scene? Do you still feel that rebellious, experimental streak?
Roxy Rawson: Yes, I think celebrating the dark and vulnerable side of emotional and allowing and celebrating the full range of emotions feels quite rebellious to me, counter to the prevailing pop culture that perhaps elevates specific emotions over others.
Punk Head: You’ve created Compassionate Body Listening from your own experience with chronic illness. Do you see music as an extension of that practice — another way of listening to the body and the world?
Roxy Rawson: What an interesting question — I hadn’t quite thought about it that way before. The method I created to heal helped me regulate my nervous system and reconnect with my true nature. In that sense, music does feel like an extension of that same practice. Singing and creating with intention becomes a way of generating regulation — both for myself and, hopefully, for others.
If someone finds emotional validation or resonance in my music, and I’ve been able to translate my inner world through the limits of my technique and training into something that feels beautiful and alive — a celebration of our inner complexity — then I feel I’ve done my job.
