As a lyricist, singer-songwriter Cassidy Mann often reshapes a small moment into a powerful and poetic song that feels both personal and relatable. “My favourite thing is to write about all the tiny things that make the bigger picture more important,” she says. “It’s interesting to me how memories are interpretable.”

Mann’s first EP If It’s Not Forever served as a catalogue of how her early relationships ended and why. It was followed up in late 2022 by Along for the Ride – a song about losing your agency in a relationship.

Now she returns with “Everblue”, the new single about losing a friend and sitting in the aftermath. “When you lose a friend, you’re left with so many shared memories that no one else knows about,” says Mann. “You also have all these declarations you made to each other, about the future and your dreams and you lose a lot of that when you drift apart. This song is about how you make peace with the realization that both of your lives took different turns than you imagined.”

More than anything, Mann hopes that other people feel seen and comforted by her stories. With family hailing from the community of Sagkeeng First Nation, her Indigenous heritage continually influences her music. “Indigenous tradition is based around oral storytelling – songs and spoken stories,” Mann observes. “It ties into my songwriting because that’s how memories and experiences have been captured in my culture forever. Storytelling is something I feel compelled to do. I think it probably has a lot to do with the fact that that’s what my ancestors did.”