Michaela Slinger announces new album Green and Trying and shares lead single "Dreaming"

The album, which arrives on 2 September via Chatty Cathy Records, follows Slinger's 2024 LP This Can't Last Forever and marks a stylistic shift towards folk-first songwriting she has described as her "Laurel Canyon era".

"Dreaming" arrives as the third preview of the new collection, following earlier singles "Something's Gotta Give" and "Fleeting". The latter track received playlist placements on Spotify's Folk & Friends and Highway One, as well as Triple J's Country Club and Edge of Country in Australia.

Slinger wrote Green and Trying across a period of personal change, which included parting ways with her previous label, regular writing trips to Nashville and Los Angeles, getting married, touring, and holding down a series of part-time jobs.

"After my somewhat time-obsessed sophomore record and EP, I think I needed to expand beyond these pervasive feelings of scarcity and not enough-ness," Slinger said of the album's thematic shift. "I wanted to write a record that felt true to the values I held as a younger kid - pure expression, love of family and friends, and a fascination with people."

The record's title reflects what Slinger describes as a more journalistic approach to songwriting, chronicling relationships and moments from her life and those around her. Many of the ideas for the album were conceived in her apartment, on walks with her dog, or based on text messages from her sister.

Slinger has cited a moment listening to CBC Q host Tom Power introduce a guest as "one of our great living singer-songwriters" as a turning point in her creative direction.

"I felt such an intense emotional response to those words, and realised that that was what I cared about the most - connecting with people through songs and songcraft," she said. "It was an early inclination of the departure Green and Trying would take from the earlier indie pop music I made."

The new material was recorded at Protection Island Studios with David Vertesi and Jonathan Anderson, following Slinger's recent EP THERE'S STiLL TiME YET. Her previous record This Can't Last Forever featured contributions from Wild Rivers collaborator Khalid Yassein and Carly Rae Jepsen producer Ryan Stewart.

Slinger has previously shared stages with Dermot Kennedy, Donovan Woods, and Virginia to Vegas, and received a nomination for Pop Artist of the Year at the 2024 Western Canadian Music Awards. Her track "Everything I Wasn't Looking For" appeared in Netflix's BET in May 2025.

Green and Trying artwork