Boyhood, the project of Caylie Runciman, has announced her new album I’ll Dream InStead, will arrive on September 18th via Hand Drawn Dracula. “This album stemmed from a feeling of desperation,” Runciman explains, and you can hear a backed-up-against-the-wall determination throughout these songs that could only be cultivated obsessively in isolation. Today, she is sharing the album’s lead-single “Loner”.

Leading into I’ll Dream InStead, Runciman was “imploding with life changes, and feeling a resurgence through the chaos.” An album of meticulous ruminations, Runciman wrote and recorded these songs compulsively, instinctively. Her process is captured on the track “Working,” as Runciman sings, “I’ve got to do it quick / or else it goes away / and if it goes it’s gone.” Most of the album was recorded on her bed, with Runciman “surrounded by old drum machines and a crappy old Casio,” hypnotically following her whims. Playing with tape delay, and matching choppy, cycling soundscapes with her wry, indelible lyrics, a further dimension of Boyhood was discovered. As Runciman puts it, “I really found myself again with this record.”

Much of the album was recorded through a rural winter, when Runciman was “feeling really cooped up, and lonely.” The song “DUI” shares that distinctly modern experience of looking up an old friend online, and finding some strange tidbit of their life—in this case, news of their arrest. The title track relays sleepless nights broken up with staring at the phone, as the ability to connect dissolves: “I want to kiss you / I’ll dream instead.” Yet there are moments of peace in solitude. “I found myself tapping into this idea of lonesome fantasy,” Runciman notes, “and the magic that came with that: turning to tarot cards, focusing on setting intentions, lighting candles…romantic creativity.” As she sings on the opening song, “People come, and people go . . . but I’m a loner out here.”

Having thrown her whole self into I’ll Dream InStead, Runciman has come out the other side determined. “I feel the most in touch with myself as an artist that I’ve ever been in my life,” she reflects. “I’m very conscious of time passing, and I want to be making as much art as possible. I’m always scribbling in my notebook, collecting ideas.”

It’s been over a decade since Boyhood arrived on the scene, releasing a sequence of albums and appeared at festivals across North America (Sled Island, NXNE, Pop Montreal). Boyhood’s 2022 record, My Dread, which marked her most painstaking musical creation—one that mirrored her introduction to motherhood—was mixed by Kenny Gilmore (Julia Holter, Weyes Blood).

Boyhood 2026 North American Tour Dates:

July 25 – Toronto ON – Dina’s Tavern
July 27 – Ottawa ON – Irene’s
July 28 – Montreal QC – Sala Rossa
July 30 – Fredericton NB – Bellwether
July 31 – Sackville NB- Sappyfest
Aug 20 – Burlington, VT @ The Publishing House
Aug 22 – Brooklyn, NY @ Lava Club
Aug 24 – Providence, RI @ Lost Bag
Aug 25 – Brattleboro, VT @ The Buoyant Heart

Pre-order I’ll Dream InStead HERE