Growing Pains & Falling in Love: FORAGER’s Even a Child Can Cover the Sun with a Finger

As an up and coming band from Brooklyn, New York, FORAGER bends genres and leans boldly into shifting textures, tension, and a touch of mischief. Collectively, they bring together influences from jazz, rock, Afro-Cuban percussion, and Indian classical music to put together an ever-evolving sound that is unafraid to utilize tempo changes and harmonic chaos. Their single “Pomeranian” has resonated with new audiences, setting them up for their most recent performance on NPR Tiny Desk.

Annie Wu sat down with lead singer, as well as songwriter and producer, Shyamala Ramakrishna to talk more about FORAGER after their tour in 2024, following their debut album Pipedream Firewood. Brown Music Review publishes this interview ahead of their tour for their sophomore album, Even a Child Can Cover the Sun with a Finger, released on February 27th, 2026.

Created through friendships and the chemistry of a jam session in early 2021, FORAGER is a testament to the bonds of the band members and their “motley musical heritage.” Composed of three core members, Jack Broza, Colum Enrique, and Shyamala Ramakrishna, the band came together organically in college after Jack and Shyamala both became friends with Colum separately. After the 2021 jam session, Shyamala describes a “unity of vision” that they realized they had–signaling the potential to form a long term group that could really create music together.

In many ways, their debut album Pipedream Firewood exemplifies how the band came together–an organic creation, piecing together an “intentional assortment” of songs that came to fall under common themes. It became “a way of conceptualizing moving through one’s youth, and one’s life,” Shyamala shared, describing it as “reflecting on the process of getting older and wiser and less carefree.”

Even a Child Can Cover the Sun with a Finger is set to be an album that shows off how FORAGER mixes a healthy dose of genre-bending musical chaos with unfailingly unique melodies. As the band told Atwood Magazine, they fearlessly poke at themes of “adult disillusionment,” anchoring the experience of growing up present in their previous album in a manner that is more intentional and “inescapably autobiographical.” The evolution of their sound is evident in their single “Pomeranian,” followed by “Leave a Little to the Imagination,” a five-and-a-half minute epic centering around these themes. Their next single, “Double Dutch” speaks to looking back on love in a memory that is both nostalgic and wistful.

Shyamala also shared that the band lives close to each other, saying, “...the connections that result from being proximal to each other…sometimes it’s cynical to think you just made this possible because you live close together, not because you’re like cosmically connected, but I think those two things are kind of related at the end…that being able to just have those physical encounters is kind of why our band happened in the first place…It feels cosmic for sure.”

Their closeness is also credited for how FORAGER pieces together their differing musical backgrounds, relying on their willingness to trust and defer to each other in their respective areas of expertise. Shyamala highlights the word “reconcile” in this process, describing how closeness is a “necessary condition of that very vulnerable process of exchanging and deleting” when it comes to something as personal as songwriting. Through this, we are left with the distinctive sound that defines FORAGER.

While Jack brings in influences of jazz and rock, and Colum brings in Afro-Cuban percussion, Shyamala's background is South Indian classical music, specifically carnatic music. When it comes to FORAGER, she is “not necessarily trying to make South Indian music, or even South Indian influenced music…but who I am is influenced by that background.”

FORAGER’s unique sound has not gone unnoticed. With Tiny Desk submissions featured on NPR Top Shelf 2023 and 2024, FORAGER has received high praise from Bobby Carter and Durand Bernarr, with Bobby Carter commenting “where have you been all my life?” and Durand Bernarr praising Shyamala’s tone as “just rich.” As consistent favorites, they were featured with their own full length Tiny Desk performance on NPR just last month. Shyamala reveals that NPR Tiny Desk has helped them find an audience that was from outside of New York City, breaking out of their hyper-local bubble.

With the release of their sophomore album, FORAGER gears up to go on their next US tour, hitting cities on the East Coast, West Coast, and Chicago throughout April of 2026. Shyamala describes the best part of touring: meeting people. With social media being such a double-edged sword, Shyamala describes the tour as a “wonderful source of randomness,” allowing FORAGER an opportunity to meet their listeners as more than statistics on a screen. She even shared a story about how one couple discovered FORAGER when trying to Shazam them from outside one of their tour venues.

I was able to see FORAGER on tour in New York City on August 16th, 2024. Not only did they bring energy, passion, and fantastic music, but they truly embodied the magic of a home crowd and a band ready to be touring everywhere. With their distinctive sound and infectious excitement, FORAGER is a band that encapsulates the intimate atmosphere of live music.

You can be sure that I already have tickets to see them on tour in April 2026 for Even a Child Can Cover the Sun with a Finger. Tune into them on Instagram at @forager.music and check out their NPR Tiny Desk performance!