ETHAN BUCKNER

His forthcoming sophomore record EPHEMERA is part meditation, part declaration: blink, you’re here - blink again, you’re gone. There’s a fervor, an urgency to the fundamental truth: you can’t stop change. Etherial, intimate, vulnerable, and anthemic, his new work embraces vulnerability as a source of power.

Following a whirlwind year of touring and releases, topped by a packed headline show at LA’s iconic Troubadour to celebrate his debut LP Treading Water, Ethan’s world ground to a screeching halt in early 2025 when he suffered a severe back injury while traveling in rural India. Multiple operating rooms later, Ethan was completely immobilized, confined to his apartment for months, reckoning with mortality, long-overlooked shadows, consequences of pushing past limits. 

In that liminal space, Ethan wrote much of the material that worked its way into his forthcoming record EPHEMERA, his second collaboration with grammy-nominated producer Justin Glasco (Paris Paloma, Lone Bellow). EPHEMERA builds from the alchemy of soaring hooks and lush soundscapes that blanket his debut Treading Water (2024). Where Treading Water searches for calm in the chaos, EPHEMERA fully surrenders to life’s fragility, probing deep into grief and reckoning.

To Ethan, the path to reconcile the beauty of life with forces of destruction is to build community. That ethos permeates his career as a songwriter and advocate for social and environmental justice. In years past, he often put himself at great personal risk in pursuit of greater good, with enough harrowing stories to close down the bar, and then some; from rappelling off a highway bridge to confront Big Oil and enduring military detention in Egypt to leading mass non-violent protests against corporate greed and political corruption, he has always lived his values into action. Now, he leads the non-profit Earthworks’ campaigns to challenge the power of the fossil fuel industry and protect public health and the climate. For Ethan, songwriting and performing is the necessary counterbalance to work that often feels impossible. 

EPHEMERA premieres June 9th, followed by a June 10th headline Troubadour show in LA and a 10-show run up the west coast.