Valerie June has always danced somewhere between the cosmos and the ground the rest of us walk on, rooting her otherworldly voice in truths while floating in a dream of sound and spirit. On her latest album Owls, Omens, And Oracles, the Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter brings us along for her most soul-expanding journey yet. It’s a light-bearing, healing, and gloriously weird record that feels like a collection of songs created as a ritual for survival.

Produced by indie folk alchemist M. Ward and featuring transcendent harmonies from gospel legends the Blind Boys of Alabama, Owls, Omens, And Oracles is a spell cast in sound. It weaves together the mystical and the mundane, pulling pages from June’s own book Maps For The Modern World and turning them into sonic affirmations of joy, grief, and rebirth.

The album’s first single, “Joy, Joy!,” arrived like a sunrise sermon. “What we focus on is what we manifest,” June said, and her focus is laser sharp. She sings of joy not as a fleeting feeling, but as an act of revolution, a resistance to despair in a time of constant upheaval. With its gospel overtones and shimmering arrangements, “Joy, Joy!” is both prayer and protest, a celebration of the now and a call to imagine better tomorrows.

Owls, Omens, And Oracles is a return to form but also a full-circle evolution. The album reconnects with the earthy, eclectic energy of her indie roots, while still finding a path forward. There’s Southern folk and cosmic soul, whispers of psychedelia, and the slow burn of spiritual jazz. And through it all, June’s unmistakable voice - at times feral, at others ethereal - guides you like a lantern in the dark. Lyrically, the album centers on spiritual openness and radical empathy. “Let yourself celebrate your aliveness,” she says. It's a call to break free from the inertia of doomscroll culture and remember the ecstatic, painful, beautiful fact that we’re still here, still feeling, still connected. There’s laughter in the lyrics, but also grief. There’s magic, but never without honesty. Owls, Omens, and Oracles feels like the record we didn’t know we needed, but we do. It’s an incantation against cynicism and a gentle reminder that softness, too, is power.