There is a difference between finding a voice and learning to trust it.

With a fifth album arriving this September, indie singer-songwriter Brooke Annibale appears to be in a season of listening more closely to her own. Her forthcoming record, Bolder Font, explores identity, self-worth, visibility, and the ongoing process of distinguishing our own truths from the many voices competing for our attention.

Ahead of her appearance at Bellforge’s first Summer Sounds music series of the season, we sat down with Annibale to talk about the emotional alchemy of her songwriting, her ease around vulnerable conversations, the commitment to curiosity with her ongoing creative expansion, the relationships that steady her, and ultimately, the winding path of building a life in the arts.

As the conversation unfolded, we found ourselves returning again and again to questions of self-trust and self-authorship, exploring some of Bellforge’s favorite questions. How do we learn to recognize our own artistic voice beneath expectation, doubt, and outside influence? What role does creativity play in helping us find our way back to ourselves? How do we stay open to growth – both creatively and in life – and continue to move forward when the path ahead isn’t entirely clear?

Whether discussing her wife and family, the agency she is exercising over her identity and sound, her Australian Shepherd’s enthusiasm for greeting each day, Annibale’s answers reflected a woman committed to feeling connected to her life and the people who surround her. It is clear she is an artist becoming increasingly comfortable inhabiting her own story. Our conversation felt like a love letter to the messy contradictions of human life and our ever evolving relationship with our art, our careers, our people and ourselves along the way.

Music, it seems, has become both a record of that journey and one of the ways Brooke continues to navigate it.

Bellforge: You grew up in a family where music was woven into everyday life, from your grandfather’s music business to your father’s work in live sound. It was modeled as a shared family passion, an artistic pursuit, and a livelihood. How has that influenced your understanding of what it means to build a sustainable creative life?

Brooke: Yeah, I feel super lucky to have grown up surrounded by a family who supported me. No one in my family ever doubted that my pursuit of making music wasn’t something worthwhile. Everyone in my family understood being independent and entrepreneurial at heart.

My mom‘s guitar playing dad (my grandfather) started his musical instrument shop and live sound business out of their family’s home in the 1960s. My mom and uncles all worked for that family business at one time or another and it’s still running today. My dad‘s side also runs a family business, but before he took over that business, he worked for his future father-in-law running sound at live shows. My dad was my sound guy for a lot of my first gigs.

Despite neither of my parents being musicians, that background really made me entrepreneurial-minded and set an example that I could exist outside of the corporate world and potentially make a career in music. There was never really a “back up plan” and I never even thought of it as something that could be risky or unstable to pursue.

Bellforge: One of the things we love about one of your recent singles “Daily Dose” is how honestly it captures the contradictions of being human. We can be strong and lost, hopeful and overwhelmed, often at the same time. The song doesn’t feel interested in certainty or having life figured out. Instead, it seems to acknowledge that we all lose perspective and need people, rituals, relationships, or reminders that help us return to ourselves. There’s so much cultural pressure to become permanently healed or grounded, but your writing seems more interested in the reality that finding our way back is an ongoing practice. What inspired that idea, and what helps you reconnect with yourself when life pulls you away?

Brooke: Thank you so much for those words about my writing. I really feel like you’re reflecting back to me the meaning with such clarity…This one in particular definitely had some unique inspiration. Literally every single morning, nearly the second I wake up, at least one of my dogs (usually Jupiter, the Australian Shepherd), has his head resting on the side of my bed, looking me right in the face and just wiggling with anticipation that we’re about to start a new day. He’s excited for every day, as if it’s going to be the best of his life. I thought, wow, it would be great if I could greet the day the way that he does.

That led to the initial spark of this song, and I wrote it as a reminder that even and especially when life gets really challenging, I want to show up for the ones I love, and I want to see each day as an opportunity to do that.

To me, the concept of a daily dose can shift and change every day. Sometimes it’s a long hug from my wife, or making each other laugh until we cry. Sometimes it’s being invited to share a coloring book with my niece or playing a fierce game of knee hockey with my nephew. To me, those are the small things that ground me, and like you said, help me return to myself.

Bellforge: The title of your upcoming album Bolder Font really stayed with us. The song seems to wrestle with self-worth, identity, and the tension between our own voice and the voices we’ve internalized from other people. It got us thinking about what it means to become more visible, trust our own desires, and take up space more fully. What conversations were you having with yourself when you wrote it, and what did that metaphor come to represent for you? More broadly, what role does songwriting play in helping you explore — or even practice — self-definition and self-trust in your own life?

Brooke: Bolder Font was one of the first songs I wrote for this record, and I knew almost immediately that it would be the title of my next record. I had been pretty dependent on external validation of my music for my level of self-worth and even my entire identity. I felt like if I didn’t succeed by the standards of someone else’s definition of success, or productivity, I couldn’t be valued. That really led me to a place of deep disappointment, doubting myself and even my love for making music.

I kept asking myself: do I really even want what I think I want? And the answer was always yes, and maybe even bigger and bolder. Bolder to me means more…being more myself, more vulnerability, doing more of what I love to do, more dreaming, more daring to dream.

Every time I thought about walking away from making music I felt drawn back in. And that’s probably because songwriting has always been my safe space for exploring all my emotions — a therapeutic and deeply personal experience for me.

Bellforge: You’ve spent much of your adult life making and releasing music. Longevity in the arts often requires a different set of muscles than talent alone. It asks for resilience, patience, and a willingness to keep showing up through uncertainty. Over the years, I’m sure you’ve experienced creative highs, periods of doubt, changing ambitions, and all the unpredictability that comes with being human. Through all those seasons, what has kept you devoted to the work? What has become your North Star when the path forward isn’t entirely clear?

Brooke: Wow, these questions are really so great. They’re really touching on so much of what I have been reflecting on lately as I approach the release of my 5th(!!) professional album. I talked about this a bit in my last answer, but yes I doubt myself all the time. But at the same time, if I didn’t believe in myself or my music, I wouldn’t still be here making it and sharing it.

I made this new record of mine in a way I hadn’t ever before – I took on producing and mixing it myself. I experienced SO many ups and downs through that process but by the end of it I had something that I could truly say “I made this” – with my hands and my heart and my mind. I have been at this for a while now, and every time I put new music out into the world, the whole industry has shifted in some major way.

I think musicians these days have to have an almost insane level of resilience to keep going. There’s no guarantee that anything you pour yourself into will ever see the light of day, let alone be considered “successful.”

But somehow that doesn’t matter. For me – music is the one thing where I completely lose myself and find myself at the same time. I could be working on a song for hours and not even realize the time has passed because I’m enjoying it so much. That is when I know I’m following that “north star.” And then when someone tells me a song got them through something in their life, that really makes it all worth it.

Connection is the north star, whether that is connection with other people or with myself and the music.

Bellforge: Artists often talk about growth, but growth isn’t always comfortable. It can involve grieving past versions of ourselves, releasing what no longer serves us, and making space for new identities, directions, and possibilities. As an artist and as a person, what is your relationship to transformation? What part of yourself is still becoming, and what are you forging toward that excites you?

Brooke: I actually really have been through such a transformation in the past couple years. Career wise – I signed to a label one year, got dropped by that label the next, felt a deep sense of doubt wondering if I could continue doing this, kept writing songs anyway – but didn’t feel the same passion anymore, started talking to myself and friends saying things like “there are just dreams I don’t think I can achieve at this point in my life.”

And THEN, something shifted. I don’t know how or why. Maybe it was working with my mentor (Christian Langdon – the producer of my last record). He was coaching me through the process of mixing the collection of songs I had been working on. The more I learned the more I wanted to learn. I felt like a kid again – the way I felt when I first started writing songs – just pure curiosity for more knowledge.

The more I learned, the more confident I became in my skills and ability to adapt and learn new things. Producing and mixing gave me this whole new perspective on making music – like I could express myself even more now that I had my hands on every part of the process. That part of me is still becoming.

It excites me to think about what else I’ll be able to do in the future and I’m already itching to produce and mix more songs – whether they are mine or if they are someone else’s – and maybe even work in a studio some day – something I never really thought of doing before. All of that would be wildly exciting to me.

And personally, I’m always learning and trying to become the best wife I can be, the best daughter and sister and aunt I can be to my family, and the best friend I can be to my friends. It genuinely excites me to grow and improve in the ways I show up for those people in my life.

Bellforge: We know how powerfully a song can bring us back to ourselves. Joy can show up in many forms: a record, a piece of art, a home-cooked meal, a nightly ritual, a beloved pet, or a TV show that reminds us to laugh. In a world that often feels heavy, where are you finding light these days? What is nourishing your spirit?

Brooke: Well, that answer is almost always my dogs – my wife & I have 3 – a pit/cattle/everything mix, a Chihuahua and an Aussie – and yes they all get along. My wife and I like to take them on adventures around where we live in Rhode Island, out in nature, by the beach, wherever helps us all breathe. Also – funny you ask this question, because this concept of doing the normal things in life that bring you joy amongst the heaviness made its way into one of the songs (ironically entitled “Heaviness”) on my upcoming album.

As for other random joys… My wife & my favorite shows lately have been Shrinking & Hacks, and even though it’s entirely ridiculous we’ve been watching the Real Housewives of Rhode Island and mimicking their RI accents around the house. Also this morning I danced around my living room to a Jimmy Eat World song that I loved in High School – because I’m finally seeing them live for the first time this summer – and just needed that moment of joy, so I guess that counts – and why not??

And this might sound strange, but actually having the heavy and direct conversations is kind of my lifeblood right now. I don’t like skirting around the issue or emotion. I almost crave the feeling of release that comes with a vulnerable conversation. So thank you for these questions.

Bellforge: Who is a regional artist whose work people should be paying attention to right now? It can be a musician, visual artist, poet, etc.? What is it that you love about them and their work? What piece of theirs should we start with or where can we find them?

Brooke: Oooh, so many, but I’d have to mention the Boston-based band Jesus The Dinosaur.

They just put out a new record called Nothing To the Branches and it’s really great. So so real and full of the vulnerability that I love in songwriting. Some of my favorite songs on it include “Agender” and “Lifetime.” The melodies and authenticity in these songs just blow me away. The bass player/lead singer – Tommy Ng – played bass and sang on my new record, and has been playing live with me for a few years. I met them years ago when I was opening for iconic Boston artist Chadwick Stokes (of Dispatch). Tommy is just a really fantastic human and so is the rest of the band.