At 19, every moment feels pivotal. And for Cloe Wilder — who put her first EP out when she was 14 — that couldn’t be more true. It’s not just the recent move from hometown Clearwater, Florida to Los Angeles; the impending end of Cloe’s teenagerdom was wracked with unexpected changes and relationship upheaval. The universally-understood adulthood transition is captured on her Americana-inspired, third EP Life’s A Bitch, where she reflects on the past and takes the reins of her future.

When Cloe started writing at 12, she was “comfortable with the fact that I was grasping at straws.” She had less life experience to draw from, so she created stories.

“What's happened since then — and what makes me the most emotional — is I can pinpoint experiences and people and interactions and things that inspired songs,” she said. “And I think that's really special: back in the day, it was a little different for me, and I had to play a little bit of pretend, a healthy amount of protection.”

Now, she’s a storyteller. With more life and writing experience, she feels the songs are finally hers; she’s “really proud of how honest the whole thing has become.”

That honesty comes through in different ways on Life’s A Bitch: The driving, intent “Heavyweight Champion” glitters darkly, pulsing with a vicious resolve, while opener “Tallahassee” goes gentler, a soft guitar underlying what she left behind (“I felt so much older in the span of three months, and I just kind of wish I could go back to my summertime self that was partying in Tallahassee”).

She’s not writing about longing, necessarily, and definitely not emptiness — she has a deep appreciation and wonder for her life, evident in her evocative, nostalgia-laden narratives.  

Strung with pearls and sporting a bold, sparkly cat eye, Wilder channels Old Hollywood glam up top; her floral and satin dresses skew toward core influence Lana Del Rey. But despite her grander aesthetic choices, Cloe’s dreamy, warm performance is immediate and intimate.

On poppier track “Cigarette,” she chuckles at her misguided exercise in “fucking around and finding out.” Trying that first cigarette was more of a metaphor than anything — a working performer on a completely different trajectory from her college-bound, coupled-up friends, she wanted a moment of rebellion, too. She wanted to know what she was missing out on.  

After all, she’d been all-in on her performing career since age 12, when she first went to writing camp. She was the only person in her family who learned to play their home piano, a musician from very early on, and attended online high school as she toured through her teen years.  

But recently, as her career has further crystallized, a number of personal relationships in Florida fell apart. That meant no more loose ends. No more reasons to maybe-move-to-LA-but-maybe-not.

Those upheavals set her free: “If those things wouldn't have happened between me and certain people, I don't think I would have been able to leave. I don't think I would have been able to officially say ‘I'm gonna go, move, and go do this thing.’”

And in just 10 solo days in LA, she wrote Life’s A Bitch, stuck in the post-move liminality where her life was clearly, finally (she’d been ideating the move for years) about to change, and she had to make peace with that. In her glass box studio in the backyard, sat at her pink piano, she could touch on Lana and Bon Iver, incorporating her own ethereal spin: “like a little, little fairy singing folk songs. That's what I want.”  

Cloe’s ability to rasp or float over piano and guitar give, alternatively, feelings of groundedness and flight. Whether she’s being deeply introspective about her childhood or romanticizing the plainest conversation into a grand, meaningful moment, she doesn’t like to shy away from serious conversations — “but I also like to sound sweet while I sing about it.”

She remarked that singing about “dirty, dark topics, and sounding really pretty while you do it really helps you connect with people.” In concert, those topics have proven a bridge to the sad seeking relief.

“As a concert crier myself, I really connect with those people in the front who are crying with me while I'm playing the piano,” she said. “I've had women come up to me after shows [and say], ‘I'm going through a divorce right now, and that song felt really close to me.’” The feelings she evokes in concert go far beyond her personal experience.

When she titled the EP Life’s A Bitch, she was being a little sarcastic, but mostly serious. She felt hard and tough and strong driving to her new place from LAX, but the solo days in LA were lonely and isolating.

“I'm just owning the fact that I was kind of struggling, and I was just trying to be self-aware that, OK, this is kind of a hard time, but I have all these people that really care about me, and I can go home whenever I want to,” she said. “And I maybe don't want to.”