This week we’re featuring a hometown favorite for our artist of the week—Chicago’s own Whitney.

The songwriting duo of Julien Ehrlich and Max Kakacek is back with their third album SPARK, which follows up their 2019 sophomore record Forever Turned Around. A lot has changed in the world since 2019, so it makes sense that Ehrlich and Kakacek completely revolutionized their sound on these new songs, marking a departure from the signature folk-pop they’d honed in on for their first two records.

I was lucky enough to hear a majority of the new record played back in December 2021, when Whitney performed a handful of shows at several independent venues in the city of Chicago. Since they were performing so much of their unreleased material, the shows were all “no-phone” shows, in which attendees had to put their devices away in locked pouches for the entirety of the concert. These special performances allowed fans to connect more with the music in real time, without any distractions, and it got fans hyped to finally hear the finished product that we now know is called SPARK and will be out this Friday, September 16th.

Ehrlich and Kakacek spent the majority of the time creating the songs on SPARK in the makeshift studio they’d built in the house they’d rented in Portland during the 2020 lockdown. The creative process focused just as much on the visual aspect of the new material as it did on the sonic aspects— they’d often play their new creations while a hardware store disco ball spun overhead and slowed-down music videos from megastars spooled silently on YouTube in the middle of the night— with the goal of testing their new sound against big-budget reels.

Leading up to the album’s release date, Whitney has released a steady drip of singles, including “BLUE,” “TWIRL” and “MEMORY”— each one continuing to lay the new foundation for Whitney. Ehrlich recalls the process of making the album during the lockdown when tour dates and other commitments were getting canceled, comparing it to the no-pressure scenario of creating their debut record. “We had time to just sit and watch the body of work grow in real time. We were just stacking stronger and stronger songs on top of each other,” he says. Listening to the likes of “TWIRL” or “REAL LOVE,” that time and attention comes across via the intricacies of the arrangements and the vivid imagery painted both by the melodies and lyrics. There’s a certain warm glow that embraces each of these songs that are in essence about moving from the past into a present era, emulating the feeling you get when the sun beams down on you after a cloudy stretch, or the sun rising after a particularly long night.

Whitney will be on tour throughout the end of the year in support of the new album, including a three-night stint at Thalia Hall here in Chicago. See all of the upcoming tour dates here, and pre-order SPARK here.