Allison Ponthier is an American

indie folk Indie folk is a music genre that arose in the 1990s among musicians from indie rock scenes influenced by folk music. Indie folk hybridizes the acoustic guitar melodies of traditional folk music with contemporary instrumentation. The genre has its ...

singer and songwriter. Her debut EP ''Faking My Own Death'' was released in 2021, and her second EP ''Shaking Hands With Elvis'' was released in 2022.

Early life and education

Ponthier was born and raised in the town of

Allen Allen, Allen's or Allens may refer to: Buildings * Allen Arena, an indoor arena at Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tennessee * Allen Center, a skyscraper complex in downtown Houston, Texas * Allen Fieldhouse, an indoor sports arena on the Unive ...

, a suburb of

Dallas Dallas () is the List of municipalities in Texas, third largest city in Texas and the largest city in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, the List of metropolitan statistical areas, fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States at 7.5 ...

, Texas, and studied jazz at the

University of North Texas The University of North Texas (UNT) is a public research university in Denton, Texas. It was founded as a nonsectarian, coeducational, private teachers college in 1890 and was formally adopted by the state 11 years later."Denton Normal School," ...

before moving to

Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

, New York in 2017 at age 20. In New York, she worked for the Museum of Natural History Snapchat stories program, tried modeling, sold jewelry she made, and drew commissioned pet portraits. In 2019, Ponthier began posting to

TikTok TikTok, known in China as Douyin (), is a short-form video hosting service owned by the Chinese company ByteDance. It hosts user-submitted videos, which can range in duration from 15 seconds to 10 minutes. TikTok is an international version ...

, with her work including song covers, songs adapted with what ''

Billboard A billboard (also called a hoarding in the UK and many other parts of the world) is a large outdoor advertising structure (a billing board), typically found in high-traffic areas such as alongside busy roads. Billboards present large advertise ...

'' describes as "queer-themed lyrics",

stop motion Stop motion is an animated filmmaking technique in which objects are physically manipulated in small increments between individually photographed frames so that they will appear to exhibit independent motion or change when the series of frames i ...

animation, and

duets A duet is a musical composition or piece for two performers. Duets or The Duets may also refer to: Films and television * ''Duets'' (film), a 2000 film, starring Gwyneth Paltrow, Paul Giamatti and Huey Lewis * "Duets" (''Glee''), a 2010 episo ...

. She was signed to

Interscope Records Interscope Records is an American record label owned by Universal Music Group through its Interscope Geffen A&M imprint. Founded in late 1990 by Jimmy Iovine and Ted Field as a $20 million joint venture with Atlantic Records of Warner Mus ...

in 2020.

Career

In August 2021, Ponthier released her debut EP ''Faking My Own Death''. The debut single from the EP, "Cowboy", was named one of the "25 Best Songs By LGBTQ Artists of 2021 (So Far)" by ''

'' on June 29, 2021. Ponthier wrote "Cowboy" in 2017 after moving to New York, but delayed its release, explaining to ''The Guardian'' in 2021, "because I was a little teen hipster rebel I was like: 'I don’t need country music, I don’t want to make that.' But I was so wrong, because it was an amazing way to express myself." She told ''American Songwriter'' she wrote "Cowboy" after she met her girlfriend and while she was processing what she described as the "culture shock" of her move to New York and her need to Coming out, come out about her sexual orientation, and told ''Atwood Magazine'', "I guess it was time to live my truth as a gay cowboy." For the "Cowboy" video, Ponthier has cited ''Death Becomes Her'', ''The Witches'', and ''Troll 2'' as some of the many films that served as inspiration for her work with director Jordan Bahat on the creative direction of the video. The second single released from the EP was "Harshest Critic" in May 2021, which she co-wrote with Adam Melchor. Ponthier wrote the song "Hell is a Crowded Room" with Rick Nowels, and in a review of the song for ''NPR Music'', Ann Powers writes, "Ponthier invokes Chris Isaak invoking Roy Orbison, Cat Power invoking Peggy Lee, Lana Del Rey invoking every singer David Lynch ever ushered onto the stage of ''Twin Peakss Bang Bang Bar." She is also a featured vocalist on the track "I Lied" on Lord Huron's 2021 ''Long Lost (album), Long Lost'' album, performed with Lord Huron on ''The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon'' in May 2021, and toured with Lord Huron in September 2021. Following the tour, she performed at Texas's Austin City Limits Music Festival. In January of 2022 Jack Antonoff announced that Ponthier would be joining him for Bleachers (band), Bleachers' 2022 tour. In June 2022, Ponthier released her second EP ''Shaking Hands With Elvis''. According to ''

'', "Half the songs on the 6-track project sound like sonic cousins of her previous work [...] But the other half of the songs, including standout single “Autopilot” and the high-camp fantasy “Hollywood Forever Cemetery,” sees the singer getting more experimental and dreamy with her sound".

References

External links

Official website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ponthier, Allison Year of birth missing (living people) Living people People from Dallas County, Texas Indie folk musicians American singer-songwriters American LGBT singers LGBT songwriters 21st-century American women singers 21st-century American singers American TikTokers Interscope Records artists LGBT people from Texas 21st-century LGBT people American women singer-songwriters