With the stillness, Runo Plum found her voice

Calling in from Germany, the 20-something Plum is preparing for a run of headline and festival shows across Europe and the UK. Much of patching was shaped by distance, spending the past few years between Minneapolis and Germany, that distance being where her romantic and creative worlds were once intertwined. A constant movement between homes and relationships shaped patching into what it became, a body of work born out of heartache and honest longing.

Born in what she refers to as “super small-town Minnesota,” the young Runo Plum grew up surrounded by quiet environments rich with wide fields and long winters, the same kind of atmosphere that seeps its way into her music. Though born and raised in the quiet rural Midwest, she found community and discovered her love for performance through the church, something she looks back on with distance. “[My family] completely deconstructed our faith," she tells me. "I definitely have some negative feelings about the church, but I’m still grateful I had that early place to sing.”

Following her gut, she left home for university in Minneapolis to attend McNally Smith College of Music, on a voice performance course. The school went bankrupt in 2018, cutting courses short mid-semester and leaving students displaced. “It was such a shock.” she says, laughing softly now. She eventually moved to study jazz in Toronto, where she stayed for a year before dropping out. Though the technical musical training stayed with her, the pace of school and juggling multiple jobs to make ends meet led to burnout and exhaustion before she had the chance to figure out her next steps.

When the pandemic hit in 2020, Plum headed north and returned home, deciding to pursue music full time. “It was really depressing to be away from the city and from other queer people,” she recalls – but the isolation became a sort of catalyst. Alone in her childhood bedroom, she began writing the songs that would appear on her debut EP earlier from ‘20 and its follow up softer. “I was forcing myself to see the beauty and everything around me, the nature, just to not be so sad about it.” she reflects. “I had tricked myself into actually really loving it.”

The tracks written during this period became the foundation of her first two projects. “I didn’t really write in Minneapolis. The writing started after I was back up north," she explains. What began as coping through the uncertainty of the pandemic and being in her twenties soon became something more intentional.

The heartbreak at the center of patching doesn’t follow the stereotype of what healing is “supposed” to be. In an era of self-help cliches and digital trends of cutting our bangs and reading affirmations, Runo resists the urge to make heartbreak palatable. Her former partner was both a romantic and creative collaborator.: “We were really intertwined," she tells me. "All of my music had been recorded with them for like three years.” When the relationship ended in late 2023, grief poured into her writing, and the songs that emerged from the ache describe heartbreak from an uncomfortably close distance.

Mental health is another theme that runs throughout the record. Plum talks about therapy in the same manner she discusses songwriting - not as a cure or antidote, but as something that allows the days to get easier. “I needed to feel like I was feeling this for a reason," she shares. Writing became a place for her to set the weight down. Writing the lead single “Pond,” wasn’t cathartic, she tells me: "I was just sulking in it.”

The song doesn’t romanticise pain or sadness; it simply allows it to exist: “Therapy definitely helped during that time, walking through nature, journaling. All the things," she adds. “I needed to feel like I was feeling this for a reason, other than just feeling it. And these songs definitely made having to feel those things worth it to me.”

Plum spent the spring of last year writing and creating the demos she would cut in Vermont. The collection of songs came together alongside producer and longtime friend Lutalo Jones, as well as instrumentalist and Plum's girlfriend Noa Francis – two people who created a safe space for her in the studio. “I haven’t really done a lot of writing with other people,” she admits, “I usually write when I'm completely alone in my room.” Recording with others meant learning to let herself be seen: “It took a lot of stepping out of my comfort zone, but it was an important next step.”

The songs about grief and heartbreak coexist alongside tracks written mid-new-love, allowing patching to hold onto love and loss at once. “The positive songs in the album are about her,” she tells me, in reference to Francis. Was it strange recording an album record about a past relationship with a new partner? She shakes her head, explaining an understanding that they made important projects together, how it doesn't disappear simply because the relationship changes shape, while appreciating the music they made.

Creating a visual world alongside the record itself isn’t an afterthought for Plum. Long before patching, she was using her own paintings for single artworks or merchandise, and the album cover features an abstract painting of a butterfly, loose-edged and imperfect, true to the meaning of the body of work. “It’s always like a little treat to be able to do that," she tells me. "I make a lot of visual stuff, even just lyric videos and things. Painting is mostly what I do, more abstract, not super literal, but it’s just another outlet.”

Plum's next live performances will see her level up with headline shows and festivals, introducing herself to news audiences: “I’ve kind of just taken myself out of it and dissociated to make myself less anxious," she says. "This round we’re about to go on is my first headline anything. It’s going to be a whole new territory. I’m playing with a band for the first time, and I feel that being with friends will help on and off stage.”

She lights up when we talk about her fans, the ones who send her messages, share art, or simply what her music means to them. “Being able to talk to people online is probably my favourite part,” she says.

Where patching exists in the mellow comfort of mourning, the next record will come with teeth. Plum wrote both at the same time, as one held the hurt, and the other has much more of what came after: "The next one is going to be more rage, more anger. Heavier, faster," she says. “After the tour, I’m chopping my hair off. I’m going to have a bob for sure. It’s gonna be sort of a different era with that record.”