The four-time GRAMMY nominee returns with an album that celebrates curiosity, reinvention, and the courage to enter the unknown.
There are albums that invite listeners to observe from a distance, and then there are albums like Trespasser that ask you to step directly into the story.
Released today via Thirty Tigers, Grace Potter’s seventh studio album, Trespasser, is a fearless collection of songs that blurs the boundaries between myth and memory, freedom and belonging. Across ten richly imagined tracks, Potter introduces listeners to a cast of drifters, dreamers, ghosts, and outcasts, creating a cinematic road saga that explores what happens when we venture beyond the spaces we are told to stay within.
At its core, Trespasser is an album about transformation.
“We’ve always been taught that the trespassers are the bad guys, but to me it’s not about reckless rebellion,” Potter shares. “It’s about exploring, physically and mentally and emotionally, and being willing to step outside the narratives we’ve accepted.”
That spirit of exploration echoes throughout the record. Often described as a spiritual successor to 2023’s critically acclaimed Mother Road, Trespasser continues the journey Potter began while traveling between her home in California’s Topanga Canyon and her native Vermont. Yet where Mother Road emerged from a search for solace, Trespasser arrives with a newfound sense of clarity and creative confidence.
Rather than presenting a collection of disconnected songs, Potter approaches Trespasser as an expansive narrative universe.
Characters drift in and out of the album’s landscape, each carrying their own stories and scars. On “Ride or Die,” a free-spirited wanderer races toward destiny. In “Gasoline,” that same figure returns in spectral form. Elsewhere, Potter introduces restless ghosts, lovesick dreamers, and larger-than-life personalities whose paths converge in tales of longing, redemption, and self-discovery.
The result feels both deeply personal and wildly imaginative, offering listeners a glimpse into what Potter describes as the stories that have been “whooshing around my soul for a very long time.”
The Sound of Freedom
Produced by Potter’s husband and longtime collaborator Eric Valentine, whose credits include Queens of the Stone Age, Weezer, and Slash, the album reflects its cross-country origins
Recorded in sessions stretching from California to Nashville and Vermont, Trespasser moves effortlessly between genres. Elements of stripped-down soul, cosmic country, classic rock and roll, and psychedelic Americana coexist within a soundscape anchored by Potter’s unmistakable voice.
It’s a sonic freedom that mirrors the album’s broader message: the willingness to embrace complexity rather than conformity.
That message resonates particularly strongly on the album’s lead single, “Love Me Not,” which continues its steady climb on radio charts, reaching the Top 5 at Americana Radio and Top 10 at Triple A Radio.
Fans will have multiple opportunities to experience the new material live.
Potter is set to appear on CBS Saturday Morning, performing selections from the album, including “Love Me Not.” The television appearance arrives amid a season of high-profile performances following appearances on Live with Kelly & Mark and WNYC’s All of It with Alison Stewart, where Potter discussed the inspiration behind the project.
Later this month, she will join Zac Brown Band’s Love and Fear Tour for a string of dates that includes stops in New York, South Carolina, Colorado, Illinois, and beyond.
Beyond the album release, Potter is also preparing for the return of one of New England’s most beloved music gatherings.
The Grand Point North Festival returns to Burlington, Vermont, from September 18 through September 20, bringing together an eclectic lineup that includes Jackson Browne, Portugal. The Man, Dawes, Trampled By Turtles, The Devil Makes Three, Maggie Rose, and a range of Vermont-based artists.
More than a music festival, the event continues to serve a greater purpose. Proceeds support the Grand Point Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to advancing the arts throughout Vermont.
The Track List
Trespasser includes:
- Main Street U.S.A.
- Ride Or Die
- Love Me Not
- Gasoline
- Run Baby Run
- Lost Cafe
- Trespasser
- The Voice
- War On The Mountain
- Belong
Few artists have built a career as dynamic and shapeshifting as Grace Potter’s. With Trespasser, she continues that tradition while delivering one of her most ambitious narrative works to date. Part road trip, part fever dream; and part meditation on identity, the album serves as a reminder that growth often begins when we step beyond familiar boundaries. In Potter’s world, the forbidden road is frequently the one worth taking.
Grace Potter’s Trespasser is available now via Thirty Tigers on streaming platforms and vinyl.
