Aerial Easts music explores the space between the conscious and unconscious mind, between what was and what will be. She dives into what she has known – adolescence, heartbreak, coming into a new social consciousness, and managing a perpetual unanchored-ness – in order to find a most surprising place to rest inside: the unknowable.

As the daughter of a military family, East spent her late childhood in Europe and teenage years in Abilene, Texas. After dropping out of community college, she moved to New York City where shed meet a group of musicians whom she would come to befriend and collaborate with (including Okay Kaya, Kelsey Lu, Wet + more). She hopes to tell stories we dont hear often. I want to tell stories about people in Texas, she says, I want to humanize different characters.

Try Harder is a tight yet eclectic record, both sonically and emotionally. I didnt want to hear any drums, East says. I was going through a period of high anxiety, she explains, adding that she listened to a lot of solo-piano to calm down during moments of ungroundedness. I wanted to make a record to be soothing in the same way [as the piano was for her]. So, much to the initial skepticism of her collaborators, East decided against adding drums to her songs. I just wanted it to be healing and calm, something you can listen to even if the world is ending, a feeling we can all relate to. The end result is a beautiful ode to those of us who feel like life sometimes is a little bit harder, that we dont quite fit in, that our edges are rough an album-length anthem for sitting in our own discomfort and groundlessness and finding a specific peace with it.