Indigo de Souza Is Raising $90,000 to Buy Back Her Finished Album

Indigo de Souza has a finished album and no way, at present, to release it. The record is mixed and mastered, with cover art painted by her mother, and it has been sitting in negotiation while she tries to exit her deal with Loma Vista Records early. To fund the buyback, she has opened a GoFundMe with a $90,000 target. Within a day of announcing it, the campaign had reached roughly a tenth of that.

The context matters. De Souza built her early career on three albums for Saddle Creek before signing to Loma Vista, which released last year’s Precipice and, earlier this year, the standalone single “Come To God.” On the campaign page she calls signing “a mistake,” writing that the relationship “was not aligned with my values” and that she felt a centering around business, money and bureaucracy that made it harder to work, create and stay true to her spirit as an artist.

She does not name the label directly, though the terms of the situation point to Loma Vista. She also makes a broader observation about leverage: “No matter what size artist you are, the contracts make it intricately difficult to leave.” The termination talks, she writes, have been one of the most demoralizing experiences of her life, and she has offered to repay everything the label invested in making the record.

Place runs through this. Hurricane Helene flooded her home in Marshall, North Carolina, and she lost nearly all of her possessions. The album she is now trying to free was written after that. Alongside the campaign, she shared a four-track recording of a song she wrote when she was nine.