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Jul 11, 2023 By Kat Ramkumar Photography by Elizabeth De la Piedra

Chicago musician and poet Jamila Woods has announced a new album Water Made Us, and shared a video for its first single, “Tiny Garden,” which features duendita. Water Made Us, which was produced by Chris McClenney and Wynne Bennet, is due out October 13 via Jagjaguwar. Check out the self-directed video below, followed by the LP’s tracklist and cover artwork.

Of “Tiny Garden,” Woods says in a press release: “‘Tiny Garden’ is a song about the way my heart works, the slow and steady way I love. In my directorial debut I wanted to create a visual representation of how I often feel in relationships, like I’m having huge feelings that I end up expressing in small specific ways. The video takes place across two landscapes, the reality of a shared apartment at the tail end of winter and an imagined ‘heartspace’ where everything is lush and green. I worked with my friend and frequent collaborator Po Chop on the choreography, so that the movement becomes the key to merging these two worlds—everywhere I dance, something grows.”

During the pandemic, Woods challenged herself to write as many songs as possible and spent months in a state of deep creativity and self-reflection. Early songs revealed a simmering common thread: love, relationships, and the hard lessons learned in their wake. Journaling, therapy, and frequent consultations with a trusted astrologer all began to reflect Woods’ own patterns in love and intimacy back to her.

“Water Made Us feels like the most personal and vulnerable piece of art I’ve ever made. I love creating from source material, diving deep into a subject and extrapolating from what I discover,” Woods says. “We sat in the house for two years and I became my own source material. Shout out to the therapists, the astrologers, the family members and friends who listened, who helped me process and transform my journaled thoughts and questions into this body of work. I hope it feels like a playlist that carries you through the life cycle of a relationship, whatever stage of the journey your heart may be in.”

Water Made Us Tracklist:

1.Bugs
2. Tiny Garden (ft. duendita)
3. Practice (ft. Saba)
4. Let the cards fall
5. Send a Dove
6. Wreckage Room
7. Thermostat (ft. Peter CottonTale)
8. Out of the doldrums
9. Wolfsheep
10. I Miss All My Exes
11. Backburner
12. libra intuition
13. Boomerang
14. Still
15. the best thing
16. Good News
17. Headfirst

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