Calgary songwriter Kue Varo has stated that they’re open minded, and the songs, ranging from cutthroat rock to bluesy bop to fizzy pop, are delightfully open-ended. At times channelling their inner Johnette Napolitano with 20/20 Hyndesight, Varo caresses insight, not bitterness, into life’s miserable, magic moments, like when a long-term relationship freezes into slush, or when you kick at the darkness and it bleeds more darkness so, what the heck, you take a knife to it and carve it into art.

Varo’s journey from childhood in Nanton to Montreal has left them well-versed in small town coffee shops and big city stages. It brought them back to Alberta to accrue The Only Hopes and record a stunning album, Cowboy Witchcraft. Held together with twang, pluck and grit while swaddled in breathtaking melodies soaring aloft on Varo’s ethereal voice, the songs rollick with transmittable joy, earned by feeling all the feels. And while there is no mistaking the singer owns their sound, the songs manifest in a variegated array that has you looking in different directions, wondering what’s coming next.

— Mary-Lynn Wardle