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Jan 27, 2026 By Caleb Campbell Photography by Anna Rhody

Brooklyn-based indie singer/songwriter Nicole Rodriguez makes folk pop that feels tremulous, intimate, and mystical under the moniker Pearla. Rodriguez first debuted with her 2019 EP, Quilting & Other Activities, before following with the transportive songwriting and delicate storybook sensibility of her 2023 full-length album, Oh Glistening Onion, The Nighttime Is Coming. Today, following last year’s singles, “You Didn’t Do Anything Wrong, You Just Broke My Heart” and “To Love Something,” Rodriguez is sharing news of her forthcoming sophomore album, Song Room, out on April 24th.

Fittingly, Rodriguez’s latest work feels like a homespun space of refuge, emphasizing her songs’ intimacy and interiority. Rodriguez wrote, recorded, and produced the album largely from her Brooklyn apartment, incorporating sampled found sound alongside her autoharp, omnichord, and acoustic guitar tones. However, the creative process wasn’t entirely solitary. She also undertook some sessions at Thump Recording with Tyler Postiglione, and filled out the record’s sound with a handful of friends and collaborators, including mixing from Bennett Littlejohn (Hovvdy, Katy Kirby, TOPS) and mastering by Edsel Holden (Sinai Vessel, Free Range).

Accompanying the album’s announcement, Rodriguez is also sharing another new single, “Be Around,” premiering with Under the Radar.

“Be Around” is the most full-bodied of Pearla’s recent singles, thrumming with steady rhythms, winding guitar licks, and understated energy. Rodriguez and her band give the track an earthen rock drive, but you can also hear hints of the twinkling bedroom folk effort swirling underneath. Rodriguez colors in the margins with shimmering synths and plaintive vocal harmonies, allowing the insular and volatile sides of the track to mix and collide together until her vocals soar sky-high in the track’s final leg. After a soul-baring climax, Rodriguez draws the song down with a repeated lyric that feels like both a question and an aching plea: “Are you gonna be around?”

Rodriguez says of the track, “This song is about the feeling of isolation that comes with being a highly sensitive and emotional person, and worrying that it makes you hard to be around or hard to love. It’s about that feeling of being ‘too much’ - the fear of what would happen when people see what is really within you.”

Check out the song and shadowy music video below. Song Room is out everywhere on April 24th. Pre-order the record here.