Sarah Krohn Makes Music for People Who Feel Everything

Sarah Krohn was 13 when music stopped feeling optional.

That was the age she wrote her first song, and somehow, even then, she knew it was not going to be a temporary hobby.

“The moment that I realized that music was more than a hobby for me was the moment that I wrote my first song when I was 13,” Krohn says. “From that moment, I just immediately knew that I would be doing music my entire life.”

She cannot fully explain how a 13-year-old could be that certain.

She just knows she was right.

Years later, she is still writing, recording, playing with a band and trying to understand herself through songs. script

From Philadelphia to Chicago

Krohn is originally from Philadelphia and is now based in Chicago.

The move was less of a dramatic music-industry decision than a life decision. After graduating from college, she was looking for somewhere to begin the next chapter, and a friend in Chicago needed a roommate.

That was enough.

Chicago eventually became far more than a convenient place to land. It became the city where Krohn built a band, played shows and developed much of the musical identity she has now.

Her genre, in the simplest terms, is indie pop rock.

But Krohn also identifies strongly as a singer-songwriter, and because she performs with a band, she sees all of those identities existing together rather than competing with one another. script

The Teacher Who Made Her Do Scary Things

One of the first people to push Krohn beyond what she thought she could do was her high school guitar teacher.

He encouraged her to attempt new things, particularly the ones that intimidated her.

“I feel like he really challenged me to try to do new things and to do scary things,” she says.

That willingness to move toward discomfort became important later.

Music careers contain plenty of uncertainty even before the artistic vulnerability begins. For Krohn, learning early that growth sometimes requires doing the thing you are nervous about helped expand what she believed she was capable of as a musician. script

Just Keep Going

The longer Krohn has pursued music, the more she understands why people stop.

It is difficult.

There are roadblocks.

There are moments when effort does not produce an obvious reward.

And there will always be a point where quitting looks easier than continuing.

Krohn’s answer to those moments is intentionally simple:

Keep going.

“I feel like the most important thing that I tell myself is to literally just keep going.”

She has also tried to detach herself from the idea that her responsibility is to make objectively “good” music.

“I don’t try to make music that is good. I just try to make music that feels like me and feels good to make.”

For Krohn, “good” becomes a dangerous measurement because it is subjective and external. Making something honest gives her a much clearer target.

If it feels like her, it did what it needed to do. script

Indie Pop Rock With a Little Sadness in Everything

Krohn describes the surface of her music as indie pop rock.

The subjects underneath it are much more personal.

She writes about crushes, social anxiety, identity and the constant question of how other people perceive us. There is yearning throughout the catalog, even when the production sounds bright.

Some songs are made for dancing around your room.

Some belong screamed through car speakers.

Some make you stop and think far longer than you expected.

Usually, they do more than one of those things at once.

“I feel like there is something sad in all of my songs,” Krohn says. “I don’t think I could write a song without it just being a little bit sad.”

That contradiction is central to her work.

Fun does not cancel sadness.

Sadness does not eliminate energy.

Krohn is interested in what happens when they occupy the same song. script

Pinegrove, Phoebe Bridgers and Ed Sheeran

Three influences immediately come to mind when Krohn thinks about the music that shaped her.

Pinegrove sits at the top of the list and remains one of her most significant musical influences.

Then there is Phoebe Bridgers, particularly the writing.

And finally, Ed Sheeran, whose influence goes all the way back to the beginning.

Krohn’s first song was about him.

It is a funny detail now, but it also connects her current career directly to the 13-year-old who first discovered that writing a song could turn a thought or feeling into something that existed outside of her. script

Making the Music She Wants to Hear

Krohn does not remember one clear moment where she suddenly stopped copying other artists and discovered her own sound.

That is because imitation was never particularly interesting to her.

Instead, the process has been about experimentation.

“What is the music that I want to hear?”

That question guides her more than trying to find another artist whose career or production she can reproduce.

“I never try to make something that sounds like something else because that has never been inspiring to me.”

What interests her is translating whatever exists in her head into the closest possible musical representation.

A thought.

A feeling.

A texture.

A contradiction.

Then figuring out how to make the recording feel like that. script

Catharsis

If Krohn wants listeners to experience one thing through her songs, it is catharsis.

The songs often begin because an emotion has become too large to comfortably hold.

“It’s usually some sort of feeling that is too much to hold inside,” she says. “And so I put it in a song to exist separate from me.”

Writing changes the relationship with the feeling.

It no longer exists only internally.

There is now a melody around it.

A lyric.

A recording.

Something separate enough to examine, scream along with or release.

Krohn hopes listeners can use the songs in the same way.

Not necessarily to solve the feeling.

Just to put it somewhere else for a few minutes. script

Start With “Hung Up”

For someone discovering Sarah Krohn for the first time, she recommends starting with “Hung Up.”

The song captures two subjects that appear repeatedly throughout her work: having a crush and questioning who you are or how you are being perceived.

It also balances those ideas with a track that is simply fun to listen to.

For Krohn, that combination makes it an effective introduction.

You can enjoy the song immediately.

Then, if you want to, you can start pulling apart everything happening underneath it. script

“Your Best Friend You Used to Sleep With”

One of Krohn’s more memorable songs began with an extremely Chicago-specific experience.

She ran into several exes of people she had previously been involved with, all within the overlapping world of the city’s creative and music scene.

That strange web of mutual connections eventually became “Your Best Friend You Used to Sleep With.”

There was jealousy in the situation.

There was awkwardness.

And there was something uniquely strange about experiencing the other side of interconnected relationships in a city that can feel surprisingly small once everyone exists in the same creative circles.

Krohn wrapped all of it into one song. script

“When the Storm Runs Out of Rain”

One of the lyrics Krohn is most proud of comes from an unreleased song:

“When the storm runs out of rain, you’re a half day drive away.”

The song has an unexpected Nashville connection.

Krohn’s father sent her a documentary about Nashville songwriters, which inspired something in her writing. When the resulting song came together, she felt it carried a distinctly Nashville quality despite the fact that she is based in Chicago.

Later, she brought the song to Nashville and performed it there.

That made the moment particularly meaningful.

Much of the music Krohn currently listens to is being made in Nashville, and she says the city has increasingly influenced the way she thinks about songs.

Playing one of those songs in the place that partly inspired it allowed the idea to come full circle. script

Songs Like Onions

Krohn wants listeners to hear new things when they come back to a song.

Her music is intentionally layered.

Maybe the second listen reveals a background texture.

Maybe another pass exposes a connection between two lyrics.

Maybe something buried in the production suddenly changes how the entire track feels.

She points to The 1975 as an inspiration for that kind of production.

“I love when a song feels like an onion and it’s like you’re just peeling back the layers.”

The comparison is funny, but accurate.

Krohn does not want everything to reveal itself immediately.

Some details are there to be discovered later. script

The Tone Wizard

One of the musicians helping Krohn build those layers is her guitarist Ivan.

Krohn calls him a “mastermind” and, more specifically, “the tone wizard.”

He has recorded guitar for several of her songs, including “Your Best Friend You Used to Sleep With,” “Another Piece of Gum” and “Hung Up.”

The first time she sent him “Hung Up,” what came back sounded nothing like what she had imagined.

It was better.

That has become part of what she values about collaboration: bringing someone else into the work means accepting that they may hear possibilities you could never have planned yourself.

Ivan also engineered and mixed “Another Piece of Gum,” reinforcing how much of an impact he has had on the sound Krohn and her band are developing. script

Chicago and Nashville

Krohn is not a Nashville-based artist.

At least not right now.

Her life and band are rooted in Chicago, and she sees significant differences between the two scenes.

Chicago feels heavily centered around playing shows.

Krohn is constantly performing with her band there.

Nashville, by comparison, feels much more centered around writing and access to musicians, producers and collaborators.

That difference is part of what brought her south.

She came to Nashville to work with a producer on a new song, play a show and experience the city more directly.

“I feel like everyone who is doing what I’m doing is in Nashville,” she says.

That does not mean she has decided to leave Chicago.

It means she is curious.

Nashville may offer access to creative resources that are harder for her to find in her current scene, and she wants to understand what that possibility could look like before making assumptions about it. script

The Basement East

Krohn had only been in Nashville for roughly two days at the time of our conversation, so she was not pretending to have a long list of hometown venues or writer rounds tied to her story.

But one room had already entered the dream list:

The Basement East.

It is one of the Nashville venues she has heard the most about, and getting the opportunity to bring her live show there would be a meaningful next step.

Her first Nashville impressions were slightly less profound.

Driving was easier than Chicago.

Nashville was significantly hotter.

And despite coming from a city famous for brutal winters, Krohn still found reasons to complain about both climates.

Some things transcend music scenes. script

The Kick

There is one thing fans might eventually come to expect at a Sarah Krohn show.

A kick.

Her photographer captured a photo of Krohn doing one at the end of a set, and the image became memorable enough that they eventually put it on a T-shirt.

The rest of the live show follows the emotional contradiction found in her recordings.

There are songs for headbanging and dancing with friends.

Then there are songs capable of sending you into an existential spiral.

Krohn wants both.

“I feel like within both of those things there is this sense of catharsis.”

Her favorite live performances are the ones where a feeling seems to physically leave your body and suddenly exist in the room with everyone else.

That is the experience she wants her own shows to create. script

Living in the Middle

Krohn has spent much of her life thinking about how other people perceive her.

Part of that comes from feeling like she occupies both sides of things simultaneously.

As a kid, she felt too weird for the normal kids and too normal for the weird kids.

That sense of being between identities followed her.

She has often wondered whether she should choose one side more clearly, whether people would understand her better if she became easier to categorize.

But increasingly, Krohn is accepting that the middle is not a failure to choose.

It is simply where she exists.

“Unless I’m occupying this duality, then I feel like people miss the nuance.”

That same duality runs throughout the music.

Upbeat and sad.

Organized and creative.

Social and anxious.

Analytical and emotional.

Fun and existential.

Sarah Krohn does not seem interested in choosing only one anymore. script

The Organized Creative

One of those contradictions has always amused Krohn.

She is intensely organized.

She loves a to-do list.

She is not particularly “go with the flow.”

And yet she chose one of the least predictable career paths available.

Music.

For a long time, she wondered whether that combination made sense.

Now she is beginning to see that creativity does not require one specific personality type.

“I think everyone deserves to express themselves.”

Krohn loves seeing personality come through in what people make, even when the person creating it does not fit whatever stereotype people have attached to artists.

Her own work is proof.

The planner and the song can coexist. script

Stop Reading the Room

One of the biggest things Krohn is learning as a performer is how differently audiences respond depending on the room.

In smaller spaces, feedback can feel immediate.

People move.

React.

Dance.

You can read what is happening.

Larger rooms do not always work that way.

That initially made Krohn self-conscious because she tends to feed off the audience’s energy.

She has started trying to break that habit.

Instead of constantly asking herself how the audience is responding, she is concentrating on what she wants to give them.

“I’ve really been trying not to rely on external validation.”

The shift is helping her perform more freely.

The job is not to manipulate a specific reaction out of the crowd.

It is to show them the songs.

Everything else belongs to them. script

Success Should Still Be Fun

Krohn’s definition of success has changed.

When she was younger, making money through music naturally felt like an important benchmark.

It still sounds nice.

But she has realized that financial success would mean very little if the version of music required to achieve it stopped being enjoyable.

“My goal now is really just to enjoy it the most that I can and make it the most fun.”

That sounds simple until the career begins placing pressure around the thing you originally loved.

Krohn has experienced periods where life stopped feeling fun.

Her response is increasingly to reject the idea that adulthood or ambition automatically requires that.

“Things can be fun.”

That philosophy has become a guiding principle for how she wants to build the next stage of the career.

If the path stops feeling right, she is willing to change it. script

The Planner Finally Won

For someone who admits she is naturally organized, Krohn spent a surprisingly long time trying to approach music more spontaneously.

Eventually, she accepted the obvious.

Structure helps her.

She has now planned out her next five releases, including the individual steps required to get each one finished and released.

The result is a clearer roadmap and a considerable amount of new music on the horizon.

“I have a lot of new music planned to be releasing, and it’s because I embraced my organization.”

Sometimes artistic growth does not mean becoming a completely different person.

Sometimes it means finally building the process around the person you already are. script

The Dream Collaboration

Krohn’s dream collaboration comes back to one of her biggest influences:

Pinegrove.

She describes them as her all-time favorite band and one of the clearest influences on her music.

Working with them would not simply be a high-profile collaboration.

It would connect the music she is creating now with the band that helped shape how she hears songs in the first place. script

What She Would Tell Her Younger Self

If Krohn could return to the 13-year-old who wrote that first song, she would encourage her to lean even harder into music as a form of self-expression.

The writing was always personal.

But Krohn feels like it took her years to fully understand how much music could help her explore identity.

“I feel like really exploring that and really seeing where that could take me could have helped me just embrace who I was earlier on.”

Some of the questions she has wrestled with as an adult might have felt less confusing if she had trusted the creative instinct sooner.

Is this really me?

Is this really what I want?

For Krohn, the answer has increasingly become less about discovering a perfectly fixed identity and more about allowing the music to document the process of figuring it out. script

For the People Who Yearn

Who is Sarah Krohn’s music for?

People who yearn.

People who overthink.

People who want to scream songs in their car.

People who like feeling things deeply enough that they sometimes need somewhere for those feelings to go.

“My music is for people that like to feel and like to think.”

Krohn is constantly analyzing.

Why did this happen?

Where did this feeling come from?

What does it say about me?

Why am I reacting this way?

For listeners whose brains work similarly, the songs offer somewhere to put that energy.

And maybe somewhere to dance with it too. script

Hayley Williams Meets Phoebe Bridgers

One of Krohn’s favorite compliments came after a show.

A listener told her that her voice sounded like if Hayley Williams and Phoebe Bridgers had a baby.

Krohn still considers it one of the greatest compliments she has received.

It is also strangely fitting.

There is something in that comparison that captures her musical duality: the energy and intensity on one side, the introspection and sadness on the other.

Krohn seems happiest somewhere between the two. script

The Songs She Wishes She Wrote

Ask Krohn for a song she wishes she had written and she chooses “Let Down” by Radiohead.

Her explanation reveals a lot about what she values in music.

Twinkly guitars.

Sadness.

And then a moment where everything opens dramatically.

“I feel like all of my songs have something dramatic in them at some point.”

The emotional expansion matters.

Krohn likes songs that build toward something larger than where they began.

That release is another version of catharsis. script

Her Next Chapter: The Best Songs She Has Ever Written

When asked for one word to describe her next chapter, Krohn immediately breaks the rules.

Her answer is a phrase:

“The best songs I’ve ever written.”

She means it.

Despite the questioning, the career uncertainty and the constant evolution of her sound, Krohn believes the material she is creating now is the strongest of her life.

There are also a few symbols that keep appearing around the world she is building:

Stars. Flowers. Cartwheels.

And the cartwheels come with a promise.

When the stage is finally large enough, she plans to do one.

For now, she will settle for the kick. script

Krohn’s final message is less about promotion than permission.

Permission to continue.

Permission to make something even when you do not know exactly where it fits.

Permission to believe that what feels like a contradiction might actually be the most honest part of who you are.

“Right now, I want people to know that they shouldn’t doubt themselves, and they should just believe in themselves and keep going.” script

That might also be the best summary of Sarah Krohn’s career so far.

Keep going.

Keep experimenting.

Keep feeling everything.

And keep turning it into songs.

Music City Musicians, Issue 022: Sarah Krohn.

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