On March 13th, 2026, Lou Oma released her debut album, Enfold. A recent graduate from Loyola, a prestigious music school in New Orleans, Lou Oma has situated herself in conversation among many of the exciting new artists breaking through in the singer-songwriter scene. Enfold was accompanied by two previously released singles, each with their own music video, and the album itself offers an exploration into their mind, filled with stories and experiences that are tackled with witty storytelling and perfective care. I was privileged to sit down with Lou Oma and talk about the process behind Enfold’s creation, its subsequent release, and her future as an artist.
Enfold took nearly four years to create. Lou Oma says that it “was less of a choice and more out of necessity.” It was a daunting process for her; she finished writing all the songs toward the beginning of her senior year at Loyola, and much of the album’s contents were informed by that pivotal time in her life. Lyrics from songs like Manger, the last song written for the record, allow the listener some insight into that coming-of-age, “I cannot keep myself from danger / I am strong as a baby in a manger.” Some of her favorite songs took months to write because she needed the time to craft something she was proud of.
Her website, which is among the most intricate I have seen for an artist, lists her musical inspirations—familiar creators such as Adrianne Lenker, Broadcast, Kate Bush among those named. I asked what she sees of herself in the work of these artists, and how their artistry might inspire her own. She harkened back to a time before she was well-versed in technology and production, being so focused on playing her music yet open to learning new things. She expressed her sentiments about being “bad at technology” to a professor from Loyola, who replied, “Why do you say that? Just do it.”
After spending time learning how to produce and use technology to her advantage, while also receiving a grant from the Women’s Studies Program (Oma shouts out women in tech) to do so, she ventured down a slightly electronic route. Only a few of those songs ended up on Enfold, the dazzling “Rocket” and the synth-laden title track, however she expressed interest in going further down that path later on. “[I want to] get better at it and get super comfortable where I can be like, this is just a tool for me to express myself.” She says that what she saw in her inspirations was women taking control of their music and their sound. “Everyone has their own unique voice when they’re writing,” she says, and it is abundantly clear from her debut that she is finding hers.
Her website also includes markings of places significant to the creation of Enfold. One is Evans Playground in New Orleans, a place she would go at nighttime with her friends who lived nearby. Another marked is Greyfriars Cemetery in Scotland, where she spent time a few summers ago. “[It was] kind of like the summer before I wrote the last song on [Enfold], which is Manger, and that melody was kind of like flowing through my head. And I didn’t start writing it until I came back, but I think that it’s just all connected in my mind.”
I told her that “Rocket” was my favorite song on Enfold and she expressed how fun it was for so many people to have different favorites. Her own personal favorite, although she says they are all her “little babies,” is the title track. That song, along with the entirety of the album, was performed live at “The Enfold Show” with Ableton, the digital music software she uses. Crafting that experience after receiving her grant from the Women’s Studies program was a new way for her to think about the concert experience. She wanted it to feel like an exhibit, focusing on rousing the senses. There was the musical element, of course, but there was also a focus on visual and olfactory stimulation; she brought cloves to enhance the aroma, along with three projectors that plastered videos of her life, a diary collage of sorts, while she sung about wanting to “enfold” the people she loves into her arms.
“Good Boys,” the second song on the record, was the first song she wrote for Enfold. She took a songwriting class that required one finished song a week, and she says that it was very intimidating to rush the process. It was a lot less about her own personal experience, and more so a commentary on the state of our society: “I was coming from a perspective of like, how we think about people when they mess up… how we publicly shame people…” The lyrics themselves are incredibly violent, “You’ll be fossilized as your evil now / There’ll be nothing left for them to disembowel.” She says that she loves to write using violent words because of how strong they are, how “we can be violent in our own lives, not in a physical way.” She also says, “[Good Boys] tries to simplify things that just aren’t simple in that way, and that’s why it feels so violent to me.”
The title track is a personal wish to slow down time. She says that it feels like the “theme of [her] life” because it is about wanting to protect people, wishing that she could preserve moments in time with the people she loves because she loves them so much. The video (along with the album cover and video for “Manger”) was created by her partner, Quinn, and feels whimsical in a way that is alike the fantasy of delaying change. She is also particularly fond of “Daze,” the closer of the record. She wrote it while she was in Murphy, North Carolina, with her family in the middle of the woods. Oma loved developing the riff for “Daze”; it was her first complicated guitar part, and upon playing it for her family, her dad asked, “What the fuck was that?”
I asked about the final line of the album, “I will give you what I give you.” She says that it is an acceptance in some ways. As the title track acts as a plea for halting change, this line embraces that she can’t: “I think a lot of it is learning to just let go of control and trying to accept that you can’t protect everyone… you can’t preserve things exactly the way that they are.” She is about to undertake a move to Minneapolis, which will be another big change in her life. However, she also says about the final line, “It’s so funny how subconscious some of it is… sometimes you just say something and then it’s like, you can kind of just assign meaning to it… sometimes I will write stuff and it’s like, this is something I just randomly said, but it does kind of fit within this place.”
I also questioned whether she had begun work on her second record. “I think it’s very new and very weird and emotional for me. But I think that I really am trying to get back into writing… I want to keep growing and doing new things… My mentor at school, Billy O’Connnell, said ‘the point of your first album is to make the second album.’ I’m super proud of what I’ve done and I’m just like; I can do better. I want to just keep going.” If Enfold is a vision into what’s to come from Lou Oma, then listeners are in for a treat.
Enfold by Lou Oma was released on March 13, 2026, through Kiln. It is available to stream everywhere.