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Oct 02, 2023 By Caleb Campbell

Later this month, Brooklyn-based pianist, singer/songwriter, and author Mare Berger is sharing her new album, Dreaming Blue, out October 20th. The record centers on Berger’s piano and voice, crafting lilting folk and jazz-inflected pieces furnished with emotive lyricism. Berger is also joined by cellist Rachel Gawell Burns, bassist Shayna Dulberger, drummer Jason Nazary, and pedal steel player Myk Freeman, who together lend lush dimension to her arrangements. Today, she is back with the album’s first single, “Fireflies,” premiering with Under the Radar.

“Fireflies” finds Berger in a spacious and meditative mode, forgoing her usual piano melodies for a bed of fragile fingerpicked guitar tones. That guitar is Berger’s only accompaniment, save some ambient cricket noises that act as the song’s outro. In this stark setting, Berger’s vocals take on an enchanting storybook element, flickering with a gentle dreamy glimmer. Meanwhile, her lyrics are equally sweet and evocative, tracing poetic meditations on life’s beauty and transience. “Glass in my heart / All shattered parts / Give them wings / Let them sing in the sky / Fireflies in the night / Shine, then lose their bright / Just a flicker / Just a flicker of light.”

Berger shares of the track, “I wrote this song to capture the transient nature of life. How when we try to grasp onto moments and people it’s like trying to hold water in our hands. We have to just let it all move through us. With fireflies in the night we are blessed to see both the flicker of light, and the passing of the light. The arising of experience and also the decay. We can be present for it all.”

Listen to the track below. Berger’s new album, Dreaming Blue, is out on October 20th.