Having made music since the late 2000s, Madi Diaz’s career has felt like indie folk’s best-kept secret. It wasn’t until she released 2021’s History Of A Feeling that she was conscious of the spotlight being on her.  She made her television debut, embarked on her first solo tour since 2014, and supported Harry Styles as both an opener and a band member during Love on Tour. “Just continuing to walk down this road can be incredibly difficult at times, and really daunting, and you just never really know. It’s my worst gambling habit,” she tell us. Thankfully, the gambling has paid off: now, Diaz is gearing up to release her latest album.

Weird Faith follows on from her 2021 release History Of A Feeling, which was a record of heartbreak and grief. True to her conversational songwriting style, Weird Faith takes a new turn, offering an honest and disarming portrayal of the beginning stages of a new relationship. Not shying away from any awkwardness or discomfort, the album exists in the space between the time you say ‘I love you’ and the moment they  say it back (or don’t). In her album announcement, Diaz wrote, “After being really burned by love – maybe relentlessly burned by it – the album is about being brave and trying again. Doing it differently”.

The album’s opening acknowledges this feeling from the outset, “Do you think this could ruin your life? / Cause I can see it ruining mine," she sings. The rest of the album takes listeners on a journey of self-reflection. Songs such as ‘Don’t Do Me Good’, featuring singer-songwriter Kacey Musgraves, are introspective in a way that also feels nostalgic and reminiscent of Nashville’s country roots, the city where the album was recorded. “Nashville is so visceral. I think it was one of the reasons that it felt so correct for me to move here was because I was just like, man, I want to learn how to tell stories like that, I want to learn how to get into inside of a moment,” Diaz tells Dazed.

Reflecting on making the album, she continues: “I’ve always felt like the more I know, the less I know”. She found herself repeatedly encountering the same questions in the throes of her new relationship: “Am I ready for this? Can I do this? Can I trust myself to know the good from the bad?”

Diaz is set to tour the US from next month (February 2024), and will be bringing Weird Faith to life with 24 shows alongside special guests Olivia Barton, Jack Van Cleaf and Daniel Nunnelee. Ahead of the album’s release on February 9, we caught up with Diaz to talk about her inspirations, working with Kacey Musgraves, and her earliest music memory.

What’s your earliest memory of music?

Madi Diaz: One of my earliest memories of music is being just big enough to be able to see the piano keys, and watching my dad play the piano. I was running around my grandfather’s house, and my dad was practising these scales over and over again. I was just running around looking up at him.

Was your dad a big inspiration when it came to music?

Madi Diaz: It was my dad and my grandfather, who was a tenor in the Greenwich City Opera in Connecticut. He was always randomly singing around the house. My dad’s side of the family is all carpenters and woodworkers, and do a lot of construction still in the Manhattan area. I also have super visceral memories of my dad and my grandfather on a roof hammering nails or fixing something and my grandfather just like belting.

What was it like recording with Kacey Musgraves?

Madi Diaz: Listening to her voice for as long as I have, it was so funny to be in headphones in the studio with Kacey and be sitting right next to her as she was cutting the vocal. It was a totally surreal and sweet moment. She’s such a fucking pro, she knows exactly what she wants. It’s just fun to work with any friend who is a professional and so good at their job. But it’s also really fun to work with such an iconic voice.

What’s the worst advice you’ve ever been given?

Madi Diaz: ‘He seems nice, he seems just great’.

What’s your star sign and are you typical of that sign?

Madi Diaz: My star sign is Taurus, and yes I’m a big, big Taurus. I’m definitely very typical, like I can’t believe I made it out of my robe this morning. I have a very comfortable robe with equally comfortable sheepskin slippers and I just like to have all of my things. I’m trying not to be so rooted, stubbornly, to the centre of the Earth.

I do have my moon in Leo and I feel like I also definitely identify with that. Then I have the Scorpio rising, which is all talk like, ‘Let’s go dancing. I want to dance to Muna’, and then I’m buckled over. I have a glass of wine and I think ‘I’m going to go home and watch Selling Sunset and eat a bag of popcorn by myself’.

What’s on your rider?

Madi Diaz: We have the worst of the worst riders. We really need to figure it out. One of my best friends, since we were 18, is Adam Popick, and we’ve been touring together for years and it’s just the two of us right now. We’ll ask for things in our rider, and because we don’t want to be wasteful, we put like two single packets of almond butter and two apples. But then we’ll show up to the venue and they’ll give you like a vat of peanut butter and like 16 apples. Or I would say, like, vegetables and hummus, and it’d be two massive cucumbers. Sometimes we’ll have a bottle of red wine, so usually the best cutting utensil that we’ll get is some sort of wine bottle opener with a tiny knife at the end. That’s what our rider is. A disaster.

Weird Faith comes out Feburary 9