Sydney folk singer-songwriter Indigo Sparke conjures up the mysteries of life on her debut full-length, Echo. With gentle guitar melodies tracing the contours between darkness and light, poetic lyrics invoking soothing and at times nostalgia-tinged atmospheres, Echo draws on deeply personal themes of dreams, queer love, addiction, heartbreak, connection, death and unfurling life. Written during her travels across America, Sparke’s debut LP captures both a sense of boundless, open skies and highways, alongside cloistered, anonymous hotel rooms and lonely hours of introspection. Co-produced by Sparke, Adrianne Lenker and longtime Big Thief producer Andrew Sarlo, Echo is a sparse affair, filled out primarily by Sparke’s ethereal vocals and accompanying guitars. It goes in search of intimacy and the vulnerability that comes from feelings of true safety, floating between the softness of her art and the grit that underlies her lived experiences, stripping the music back until, like Sparke herself, it feels humbled by life. On her debut LP, Indigo Sparke looks towards a vast sea of constellations in the desert night, drawing parallels between those heavenly bodies and the human experience. Those stars are much like ourselves: connected but apart, luminous and awe-inspiring but suspended amidst a blank, void expanse of space, all of them yearning for something greater to belong to.