wren & wilde

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Wren + Wilde Strikes a Match With Debut Album Serial Dreamers

Minnesota folk band Wren + Wilde draws from the deep wells of love, loss, and resilience in their debut album Serial Dreamers. Blending atmospheric folk, Southern gothic textures, vintage country, and Laurel Canyon-era rock influences, the band carves out a sound all their own — a gritty flavor of Americana they call “smoke folk.”

Led by singer-songwriter Hilary Yoder, Wren + Wilde’s songs wrestle with what it means to be human — to grow older, to lose our way, to love imperfectly, and to keep reaching for hope even when life gives us every reason to let go.

“Life breaks our hearts over and over,” says Yoder, “but somehow we keep coming back to it with our hopes in hand. That’s what these songs are about.”

With echoes of The Civil Wars, Fleetwood Mac, Emmylou Harris, and John Prine, Serial Dreamers feels both timeless and deeply personal — a collection of songs shaped by the places we come from, the people we love, and the stories we carry with us.

THE SONGS

The songs on Serial Dreamers feel like conversations shared on the front porch or a long drive — personal reflections set against the larger forces of nature, time and change. Throughout the record, Yoder explores what it means to love temporary things: people, places, seasons and dreams.

The title track, “Serial Dreamers,” captures the fragile, defiant hope of being human. It reflects on our tendency to keep building and believing despite the uncertainty woven into every life.

“Chronic believers, Serial dreamers

Though the deck is stacked against us

We still place our bets and pray”

Even knowing how fragile it all is, the song celebrates the courage it takes to begin again:

“We know, we know, we know, we know

It all comes to an end

Still we go, we go, we go, we go

And give this life a chance

Gather up our hopes and build some castle in the sand

Even though we know the tide is coming in”

“Chasing Time” finds Yoder wrestling with regret and the impossible desire to reclaim lost years. With images of open roads, fading daylight, and paths not taken, the song explores the universal ache of looking backward while learning to make peace with the road that brought you here.

“Set out for that bright horizon

Penny in my pocket, stars in my eyes

Thought we could reach the coast by the morning

Turns out I was on a crooked line”

The chorus arrives at a hard-earned realization:

“Time keeps ticking

Sun keeps setting

Though I keep regretting

I’m only running circles round my mind”

“Dog Days” brings a classic country sensibility to seasonal melancholy, using the changing northern landscape as a mirror for the passage of time. Against images of fading summer light and wildfire smoke rolling through the boreal forest, Yoder captures the bittersweet ache of watching beautiful things slip away.

“It’s like holding back an avalanche

Trying to catch a breeze in your hand

There goes another grain of sand

Down the neck of the hourglass”

“Caverns” turns inward, exploring what it means to love someone through their darkest seasons. The song acknowledges that we cannot always rescue the people we love — sometimes the deepest devotion is simply staying beside them.

“I can see you sinking down in the caverns of your mind

I can feel the distance growing between your heart and mine

And I wonder just how long you’ll be gone from me this time

As you’re sinking down deep inside the caverns of your mind.”

Written for Yoder’s daughter, “Luella” is a timeless folk waltz carrying the hard-won wisdom of motherhood. It is a reminder to protect your light in a world that often tries to dim it.

“This world’s gonna wanna tear ya down

And tell ya how to live and who to be

Try to make you small and

Worry how you ever will fit in

That pretty heart of yours is something like

The world has never seen.”

“Haunted Home” brings a spirited honky-tonk energy to the ghosts of lost love. Through playful but poignant imagery, the song turns heartbreak into a literal haunting — the memories and echoes that linger in the places once shared.

“Spirits in the kitchen

Ghosts inside the walls

Hear your voice a ringing down these

Flower papered halls”

But rather than staying trapped in the past, the song becomes an anthem of moving forward:

“So long. So I'm leaving

Its time that I be leaving all these thoughts of you behind

So long as I linger here

You're gone but you ain't gone 

and I'm taunted by this haunted home”

“Wool Suit” steps into darker Southern gothic territory, using fairytale imagery to tell a story of charm, deception, and finally trusting your instincts.

“Some kinda game you play

Hide those teeth behind a pretty face

You really almost had me swayed

But you still move like a wolf”

“Gitchi Gami” is a love letter to Minnesota’s North Shore, beginning as a haunting folk ballad before unfolding into a sweeping ’70s-inspired jam. The song captures the almost mystical pull of Lake Superior — the way landscapes can hold our memories as strongly as people do.

“Take me where the hills are painted lupine blue

Take me where the Sawtooth Mountains sing of you

Take me where the waves come crashing on that black beach

Bathe me in cold waters deep”

PRODUCTION AND COLLABORATION

Serial Dreamers was produced and recorded by Christopher Furst in his home studio, where the songs evolved from intimate folk arrangements into rich, cinematic landscapes.

“We could not have asked for a better collaborator,” says Yoder. “Chris has this incredible ability to honor the heart of a song while exploring all its potential.” Over the course of 6 months, Yoder and Furst explored arrangements and shaped the album layer by layer. “Whether it was a banjo line, a guitar texture, or a tiny atmospheric detail buried in the background, every choice was about serving the song.” The result is a record that feels both carefully crafted and deeply human.

Guest performances from Haley E. Rydell (fiddle), Atom Schmitt (pedal steel), Caitlin Benson (cello), Dustin Smith (mandolin), Tammy Rogers King (fiddle on “Chasing Time”), and Furst himself (electric guitar, banjo, resonator, baritone guitar, additional keys, percussion, and glockenspiel) add further depth and texture to the record’s expansive soundscape.

At its heart, Serial Dreamers is a record about finding your way back — to yourself, to the people you love, and to the dreams that keep calling us home. It is a tribute to the fragile, foolish, beautiful act of believing — of setting sail in paper boats and praying the damn thing floats.

Serial Dreamers will be released October 7, 2026, with an album release celebration that evening at Icehouse in Minneapolis. Doors 6p. Show 8p.