The indie folk artist Dead Gowns, hailing from Portland, Maine, invites us into her hauntingly beautiful and profoundly human debut album, ‘It’s Summer, I Love You, and I’m Surrounded by Snow.’ This raw and weathered exploration tackles themes of desire, illness, and the essence of longing. Through her deeply emotional arrangements and meticulously written lyrics, singer/songwriter Geneviève Beaudoin transforms confusion, sorrow, and yearning into a gentle, slow-burning catharsis that resonates long after the final note has faded.
Stream: “How Can I” – Dead Gowns
Hold on to something, the allure of wanting, in every season’s reach…
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Dead Gowns’ music embodies a distinct weather system – wind howling through aged church rafters, guitars crackling like distant thunder, and a voice that can shift from a soft whisper to a raw wail in an instant. Her songs evoke both coastal and intimate sensations, rich with foggy mornings and turbulent afternoons where desire strikes with sudden intensity: Jarring, bewildering, and impossible to ignore. In ‘It’s Summer, I Love You, and I’m Surrounded by Snow,’ Geneviève Beaudoin channels that intensity into sound, infusing her fierce indie folk with the resonances of Maine’s islands, gymnasiums, and secular churches. The outcome is exceptionally raw, intimately aching, and dramatically tender – an album where every tremor of desire, every pang of illness, and every flicker of grief is translated into song.
Released on February 14, 2025, via Mtn Laurel Recording Co., ‘It’s Summer, I Love You, and I’m Surrounded by Snow’ is the full-length debut of Portland-based singer/songwriter Geneviève Beaudoin, who has been cultivating a world of dark, romantic, and lyrically rich indie folk under the name Dead Gowns since 2018. This album follows the project’s 2022 ‘How’ EP (and its 2023 Vinyl Me, Please edition), expanding that record’s intimate and spectral palette into a more audacious, heavier, and considerably more open work. While ‘How’ captured the early essence of Beaudoin’s voice and vision, ‘It’s Summer, I Love You, and I’m Surrounded by Snow’ reveals her stepping into a richer artistic identity rooted in personal exploration, emotional risk, and a desire to examine human feelings from various perspectives.
“This is a collection of songs… about the nature of wanting,” Beaudoin conveys after a reflective pause, describing her carefully crafted music. “It delves into entering adulthood and grappling with life’s ability to either fulfill desires or leave them painfully unmet. I wanted to write songs to better understand my cravings – to be touched, to be recognized, to gain control, to encounter someone lost to time.”
That motivation to explore desire from every perspective became the backbone of the record, but the album's creation took longer than Beaudoin had anticipated. “I envisioned finishing this record much sooner,” she reveals to Atwood Magazine. “We began preparations in 2019 and started recording in 2020. I never expected to spend so many years on it – re-recording tracks, taking breaks, and returning to them – but this additional time allowed me to refine my language around music production and clarify what I wanted to create and hear.”
This slow-paced process enriched the creative partnership at the heart of the record. “My collaboration with my partner and co-producer, Luke Kalloch (who recorded and mixed the album), became significantly stronger. I had to resign myself to the fact that the record would take the time it required.”
The time spent recording took place in environments that influenced the album just as much as the songs themselves. “We recorded mostly in old churches, community centers on islands, home studios, and other unconventional spaces. As Luke shared with me his enjoyment of the mixing process, he described making all these various spaces and songs cohesive in a mix while preserving the unique charm of each location.” Those spaces made their mark and influenced performances. “If you listen closely, you can hear how incredibly cold it was to sing ‘Kid 1’ in a church during a December snowstorm – but perhaps that’s why that vocal delivery felt right.”
The geographical backdrop of these sessions – spread across the coast of Maine – remains embedded in the album’s fabric. “We began recording the LP in a deconsecrated church in Stonington, Maine (a village on Deer Isle). From there, we added tracks in several home studios and a community center gymnasium on Peaks Island, just outside Portland. Only one song, ‘Bad Habit,’ was recorded at PRISM Analog – a non-profit studio in downtown Portland.”
After years immersed in these physical environments and navigating her emotional landscape, Beaudoin began to grasp what this debut might reveal about her as an artist
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Indie folk artist Dead Gowns, hailing from Portland, Maine, invites us into the depths of her profoundly human and darkly romantic debut album, ‘It’s Summer, I Love You, and I’m Surrounded by Snow.’ This album is a raw and weathered examination of desire, illness, and the essence of wanting. Through profound and emotionally poignant arrangements paired with beautifully crafted lyrics, singer/songwriter Geneviève Beaudoin transforms feelings of disorientation, grief, and longing into a gentle, smoldering catharsis that remains long after the final note has dissipated.