Singer-songwriter Lily DeTaeye announced today her first live album, Studio 3 Live From PBS Iowa, and shared the lead single “Maybe It’s November”. The 14-track set, captured at Iowa PBS’s Studio 3, arrives exclusively on vinyl October 24 via Midtopia’s Buy Before You Stream initiative, with a full digital release November 21.
“Maybe It’s November” is described as “a weary reflection on seasonal darkness and lost love” with “lamenting guitar lines are meant to echo Jeff Buckley’s Grace.” DeTaeye sings through a fog of lethargy: “waking up every day in a fog” and “pissing time away.” The explanation she gives herself – that it’s just the onset of winter – offers hollow comfort compared to the real source of her sadness: a love long gone.
Studio 3 Live From PBS Iowa presents DeTaeye in a different light from her studio recordings, which tend toward pristine, celestial atmospheres. Here she appears in raw, unvarnished form alongside her Des Moines-based band – Chris Hansen (drums), Steph Graham (bass), and Bryan Vanderpool (guitar, who also mixed and mastered the album). “We didn’t go into that performance thinking we would release it as a live album,” DeTaeye says. “It just ended up being something that we all felt really proud of. The songs sounded so good, and it felt very cohesive.”
This release is also her first vinyl pressing, manufactured at Third Man Pressing in Detroit, a plant renowned for its craftsmanship and quality. It’s a milestone that resonates deeply for DeTaeye, who cares as much about tactile experiences as sonic ones. Through Buy Before You Stream’s vinyl-first model, fans are invited to experience her music in its most communal form: on wax, surrounded by artwork, lyric sheets, and the ritual of listening together. “It’s a fitting set of songs for vinyl,” she says, “because more than ever they capture the presence and warmth of a band performing just a few feet away.”
Studio 3 Live From PBS Iowa by Lily DeTaeye
1. 100 Cuts
2. Break, Rattle, Shake
3. Bullheads
4. East Coast Dreamboat
5. Father’s Daughter
6. Hive Mind
7. Hostess
8. Lil Roach & Nasty
9. Maybe It’s November
10. Metal, Metal
11. Peppermint
12. St. Vrain
13. The Great Breakthrough
14. What We Do
DeTaeye’s path is as singular as her sound. A press clipping once described her as “the weird girl in your book club who definitely has a few dead bodies in her closet.” That eccentricity runs through her catalog, where whimsical touches and flashes of magical realism are grounded by songs about loneliness, belonging, and the everyday human search for connection. She began singing at 13, busking at farmers markets in her native Des Moines, before releasing 2017’s The EP and 2019’s BiTe Back, both steeped in blues-influenced confidence. Her 2023 album Hive Mind expanded her world further, layering her sharp songwriting with dreamy textures. Now 27 and newly based in New York, she continues to grow into one of the most intriguing independent voices of her generation.
According to DeTaeye, Studio 3 Live From PBS Iowa is built for “casual, communal spaces – slow Sunday mornings, patio smoke sessions, or evenings under the stars. They’re relaxed but luminescent, gazing outward with curiosity while holding onto the intimacy of a neighborly porch hang.”
Ahead of the album’s release, DeTaeye is bringing her songs on the road with a run of September dates that include the Boone Songwriters Festival in North Carolina (9/12–13), Cafe Wha? in New York City (9/27), and Artmageddon in Brooklyn (9/28).
Images via Lily DeTaeye
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