Welcome to Basia Bulat's house. With her new album (out on February 21 through Secret City Records), the songwriter is welcome listeners into Basia's Palace — the place where she's raising her young children, cramming in little moments throughout the day to work on music in the basement.
She tells Exclaim!, it was an experience "a bit like working on a really big quilt over a really long time. It felt like I was building a little sonic world piece by piece that expanded as I went further into it."
That album is, naturally, being supported with a tour — and that tour inspired Bulat's ranking of her five best songs from across her own catalogue. "Here's five of my favourites at the moment, since I've been revisiting all the albums and putting together a setlist for the upcoming tour," she notes.
This includes the folk song that inspired an audience to mosh, running the sound of the wind through a guitar pedal, and the musical moment she said goodbye to her childhood. See her list, presented in chronological order, below.
"Heart of My Own"
Heart of My Own (2010)
This is a song I wrote while dreaming about going to Dawson City. The melody haunted me for ages until I reached the Top of the World Highway and finished the lyrics while I was there. The first time I performed it was in Dawson and, true story, the crowd started a mosh pit. It was amazing.
"Tall Tall Shadow"
Tall Tall Shadow (2013)
These are the lyrics I needed to sing to myself over and over again, like a mantra. They helped me through grief and brought me back to life.
"Already Forgiven"
Are You in Love? (2020)
The lyrics for this song felt like they came to me upon the wind itself, softly at first and then like a storm. To honour that, in the recording we actually tracked the wind like it was my backing singer — and then put that signal through all sorts of guitar pedals and fun stuff and let chance and the power of nature decide the sonic landscape of the recording, in the same the way that forgiveness requires letting go.
"I Was a Daughter - The Garden Version"
The Garden (2022)
This song felt like catching lightning in a bottle on the first try. I still remember writing it in my tiny apartment on the noisiest street in London while I was a university student, and feeling like I was writing something from before myself and beyond myself. It was so naive and joyful: "We gave away our hearts before we knew what they were." I love the original version from "Oh My Darling" because it captures that joyful feeling so well.
Returning to it years later to record it for "The Garden" was one of the most surreal experiences of my life, singing while pregnant with my own first daughter. In that version, the song feels like it time travels back and forth, from the moment you say goodbye to your childhood without knowing it to welcoming a new life to earth.
"My Angel"
Basia's Palace (2025)
This is one of the newest songs I've written, and I'm just still so excited about it. There's something so mysterious and exultant about feeling like you've been visited by an angel — whether that's feeling love at first sight or maybe someone stepping in to help you at a moment you really needed it, it's like a surrender to fate. I love the different sounds that all come from totally different worlds cascading into these big harmonic moments to try and capture that feeling.