Skullcrusher aka: Helen Ballentine, has announced her debut, self-titled EP. The album will arrive on June 26th, via Secretly Canadian. ahead of the release, the singer/songwriter has shared lead single/video, “Places/Plans.” For the “Skullcrusher” EP, Ballentine worked with producer Noah Weinman (Runner).

Helen Ballentine has been playing music for most of her life — piano from age five, guitar since high school — but her songwriting didn’t emerge until later. After moving from her home in upstate New York to Los Angeles to study studio art in college, a trajectory she had been on since she was a teenager, Ballentine quit her full-time gallery job. Suddenly faced with a peculiar freedom, she decided to seriously pursue music for the first time.

While nannying on the side to make ends meet, she wrote “Places/Plans,” her first song for Skullcrusher, a little over a year ago. Says Skullcrusher: “I thought a lot about my self-worth during this period of uncertainty,” says Ballentine. “‘Places/Plans’ attempts to communicate the beauty and vulnerability of being alone and what it means to let someone else in to see that. It feels like the thematic core of the EP. It is a song for being alone in your room, lying on the floor with a book and the window open, but also for letting someone in to lie with you.”

Skullcrusher
Skullcrusher Ep
Tracklist
Secretly Canadian

1. Places/Plans
2. Trace
3. Two Weeks in December
4. Day of Show

Skullcrusher will take over Secretly Canadian’s Instagram for a livestream performance this Thursday, April 23rd at 12pm PT / 3pm ET.