She had already learned how to leave. Kacey Musgraves moved through the last decade with the kind of lyric precision that makes the ordinary feel like revelation. After the widescreen glow of Golden Hour (2018) and the three-act intimacy of star-crossed (2021), her life since has been visible in the songs she chose to sing with others and the way she arranged her retreats. Her duet with Zach Bryan, “I Remember Everything,” reached an unexpected cultural apex in 2023 when it debuted at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and later won the Grammy for Best Country Duo/Group Performance. That sudden mainstream summit changed the scoreboard but did not change the work ethic. It sharpened it.**

She wanted quieter truth. The record that became Deeper Well arrives after a period of re-rooting. Musgraves spent time in Tennessee woods and in New York rooms. She walked away from a life she had publicly catalogued in the aftermath of her divorce and began writing songs that looked sideways at recovery, at friendship, at ordinary religious questions. References to Saturn return, myths and bird signs thread through the album. They are precise details. They are not ornaments. They point to an artist aiming for steadiness rather than spectacle.**

The collaborators were familiar. Musgraves returned to the trio that had shepherded her previous major records. She co-wrote and co-produced with Daniel Tashian and Ian Fitchuk, the pair behind the sound of Golden Hour. That continuity matters. It is not a retreat. It permits risk within a comfort zone. The choice of Electric Lady Studios in New York City as a recording base — a studio Musgraves said had “good mojo” — is not theatrical. It is a practical decision to change the room around the same people and let different light fall on the songs.**

The project was also small in public ambition and thoughtful in presentation. She teased the album with a title single and a visual language that mixed cottagecore intimacy and a little West-Coast psychedelia. Merch and tactile objects accompanied the release: an 84-page zine, a Boy Smells candle collaboration, and later farmer’s market pop-ups timed to the deluxe release. These moves show an artist who measures attention and gestures toward her audience in physical, domestic terms. The record would be heard. It would also be held.

She took the studio seriously and treated it like a landscape. Recording for Deeper Well centered at Electric Lady Studios, New York City, with additional work credited to rooms in Nashville such as Blackbird, RCA Studio, and Sound Emporium. The choice of rooms mattered. Electric Lady offered reverb-rich rooms and a history that Kacey wanted underfoot. Nashville’s studios supplied the muscle of players and strings.**

The production team was the record’s nervous system. Kacey co-produced with Daniel Tashian and Ian Fitchuk. That trio wrote most of the songs together. Fitchuk’s touch as a drummer, pianist and arranger and Tashian’s textural choices on 12-string guitars, Mellotron and subtle synths shape the album’s warm palette. Mixing duties included Shawn Everett and Konrad Snyder, while mastering was handled by Greg Calbi. Those names mark a particular sonic ambition: clarity, organic low end and a willingness to let silence breathe inside an arrangement.**

Instrumentation favored wood and skin. The album is built from fingerpicked acoustic guitar, banjo and pedal steel plus restrained string parts and occasional Mellotron and synth washes. Todd Lombardo appears across the sessions on acoustic and 12-string guitars. The low end is sometimes live bass played by the producers themselves and sometimes Moog or synth bass for color. Percussion often reads as brushwork or light tom patterns. The result is sound that feels lived in rather than assembled.**

Recording techniques leaned to live capture with careful layering. On many tracks Musgraves’ voice sits forward, nearly conversational, with background harmonies placed close in the mix rather than distant. That choice makes small lyrical details audible. Ambient touches — field-like sounds, breath, a thread of bird-song imagery in the production — are used sparingly and always to underline the lyric. Where the music calls for color, they used analogue keyboard textures and Mellotron strings instead of heavy orchestration. The engineer’s decisions kept the record intimate.**

There were collaborative surprises in the deluxe sessions. The expanded edition, released as Deeper into the Well on August 2, 2024, added seven songs that include guest vocals from Leon Bridges on “Superbloom” and the band Tiny Habits on “Perfection.” Those tracks were folded into the same production approach and recorded with the same crew across New York and Nashville sessions. They push the album outward while keeping the same interior light.

The expanded edition released on August 2, 2024, subtitled Deeper into the Well, adds seven songs to the March 15, 2024 core album. That expanded edition brings the total to twenty-one tracks. Below are notes on each of those twenty-one pieces in the order they appear on the expanded edition. Each title is presented on its own line in bold followed by focused commentary.**

Cardinal This record opens with a song that names a signal and turns it into a whole theology. Musgraves uses the cardinal as a messenger and a memory-lode. The arrangement is open and sunlit, built on chiming acoustic guitars and layered vocal harmonies that recall 1960s group-singing without pastiche. Lyrically it reads as elegy and gratitude at once. The production favors a warm midrange so her voice sits near the front of the room. Placed first, the song frames the album as a work of attention to small, persistent signs.**

Deeper Well The title track states the record’s argument plainly and then lets the detail do the work. Fingerpicked guitar and soft organ create a domestic cathedral. The lyric catalogs things that drain her energy and then refuses them, a precise inventory of grown-up pruning. Musgraves’ delivery is conversational, almost confessional. Production choices — close-miked vocal, sparse percussion — make this feel like a decision made in the kitchen rather than onstage. It is the album’s moral center.**

Too Good to be True An economical pop-country tune that moves with a brisk gait. The song interpolates a melodic motif that recalls Anna Nalick’s “Breathe (2 AM)” in a way that functions as a wink and a structural hook. Acoustic strums and a concise backing vocal arrangement keep the momentum tight. The lyrics work through doubt and desire in plain sentences, and the short runtime prevents this track from overstating its case. It acts as a palate cleanser after the title track.**

Moving Out The literal act of packing and leaving becomes here a metaphor for rearranging emotional furniture. The arrangement uses slide guitar and a steady low pulse to suggest movement on the road. Musgraves’ voice alternates between wry observation and soft astonishment. In the sequence it functions as the beginning of an exit narrative. It is practical and precise.**

Giver / Taker A tight three-minute portrait of reciprocity. The song’s rhythm section is spare. The production carves space for harmonies that arrive in the chorus to answer the lead vocal. The lyric balances generosity and boundary-setting. Placed near the album’s opening third, it continues the theme of discerning what to keep and what to let go.**

Sway A smaller, wistful song co-written with Tommy English that carries an almost lullaby quality. Guitar arpeggios and gentle synth pads cradle the vocal. The production keeps things minimal so the harmonic shifts stand out. The song’s intimacy makes it one of the album’s private moments.**

Dinner with Friends A short gratitude song made expansive by detail. Musgraves lists domestic facts and small pleasures and transforms them into a social ethics. The production feels like a warm kitchen: piano, brushed percussion and a touch of pedal steel. The lyric name-checks Texas and its sky, but it does so to point to belonging rather than to polemic. It is a song about the ordinary resources of steadiness.**

Heart of the Woods A campfire-sized interlude inspired by fungal networks and the mycologist Paul Stamets. The track is compact, nearly hymn-like, and trades on the image of subterranean connection. Sparse acoustic picking and a chorus-like vocal make it feel like a communal chant. In the album’s arc it shifts the focus from interpersonal to ecological networks.**

Jade Green This track leans on Celtic-tinged melodic motion and a restrained string arrangement that gives the song an elegiac pull. The lyric treats objects as talismans. Musgraves sings of a bracelet that carries memory. The production lets the melody unfurl slowly and gives the vocal room to register small inflections. It is one of the record’s more wistful slow burners.**

The Architect A compact, philosophical country song co-written with Shane McAnally and Josh Osborne. The lyric asks blunt, structural questions about faith and human nature. Musgraves’ phrasing is simple and direct. Piano and clean guitar underpin the track and leave ample space for the chorus to land as an open question. This song later won the Grammy for Best Country Song, a recognition that underlines how a modest arrangement and a plainly strange lyric can cut through larger awards seasons.**

Lonely Millionaire A jaunty, slightly ironic take on wealth and solitude. The arrangement moves with a sprightly bass line and fingerpicked guitar. The lyric plays with the paradox of having many things and few anchors. Production keeps the sound bright so the irony reads without bitterness. In the album’s sequencing it functions as a small, pointed detour into social observation.**

Heaven Is This short track borrows a Scottish folk cadence in its melody and uses quiet acoustic accompaniment to ground its theological impulses. The song’s images are domestic and small, and the harmonic arrangement nods toward British pastoral songcraft. It is an intimate, restful moment that tempers the record’s questions with the language of consolation.**

Anime Eyes One of the album’s more surprising turns. The song uses playful production touches — robotic vocal effects and a clipped rhythm — that recall the kind of modern pop studio playfulness Musgraves explored on Golden Hour. Lyrically it is a lover’s portrait that becomes mythic in its imagery, foregrounding kawaii-inflected metaphors and bright, slightly surreal lines. Its placement in the middle gives the record a jolting, effervescent lift.**

Nothing to be Scared Of A closing meditation for the original sequence. The track is spare and direct, with a lullaby cadence. Guitar and subtle strings support a vocal that speaks to the listener as if across a bedside table. It resolves the earlier anxieties without flattening them, offering another kind of courage: the small, steady courage of ordinary continuance.**

Ruthless A bonus track first issued as a variant on the album and later included in the deluxe edition. It reads as an oath. The lyric promises protection with plain, slightly dangerous imagery. Musically it is fuller than the earlier intimate tracks, with slide guitar and a forceful mid-tempo pulse. The song expands the emotional vocabulary of the record by allowing righteous ferocity into its quiet world.**

Little Sister A tender piano-led ode to family bonds. The track places the piano forward and uses vocal harmonies like warm domestic light. The lyric addresses sibling love and small pieces of advice, and the performance registers as one of the record’s most intimate confessions. It functions as a domestic anchor among the deluxe’s new material.**

Flower Child A sunnier, more free-spirited song that nods to Musgraves’ folk influences. Acoustic guitars and tambourine give it a loose, buoyant feel. The lyric sketches a character who chooses a gentle rebellion through aesthetic and lifestyle, and the production keeps it modest and charming. In the expanded arc it widens the album’s emotional geography toward pastoral contentment.**

Superbloom (feat. Leon Bridges) A duet that blends Musgraves’ folk intimacy with Leon Bridges’ retro soul smoothness. The arrangement mixes acoustic bedrock with subtle horn or organ color and places the two voices in complementary registers. The guest spot feels like a call-and-response between two ways of honoring tenderness. As a deluxe addition it provides a brief, soulful counterpoint to the record’s quieter textures.**

Perfection (feat. Tiny Habits) A collaboration with the indie pop trio Tiny Habits that foregrounds harmony and delicate rhythmic interplay. The song examines the pressure to present flawless versions of oneself. Production uses close, layered vocal textures so the three voices weave in and out of the lead. It reads as a conversation about self-expectation and the relief of mutual vulnerability.**

Arm's Length One of the more plaintive tracks on the deluxe. The arrangement is spare with piano and soft strings. The lyric concerns the distance we keep to protect ourselves, and the vocal performance carries a weary tenderness. Its placement late in the sequence deepens the album’s meditation on boundaries and protection.**

Irish Goodbye A short, aching ballad about absence and the difficulty of being left without closure. The vocal is close-miked and the production is restrained: a single acoustic guitar, a small string bed and harmonies that appear like breath. Musgraves had quietly introduced this song during concerts earlier in the year before releasing it as a single to preview the deluxe. It closes the expanded edition on a note of small, private grief and quiet acceptance.**

Overall the sequencing of Deeper Well: Deeper into the Well is deliberate. The core fourteen-track album moves from outward signs and elegy into private confession and then toward a consolatory calm. The seven deluxe tracks broaden the album’s emotional field without breaking its tonal center. They add voices and textures that make the record feel lived-in. The choices to place the duet with Leon Bridges and the Tiny Habits collaboration toward the end keep the album’s first half intimate and then let it expand into conversation. Transitions are mostly economical. Short tracks like “Heart of the Woods” and “Heaven Is” act as interstitial breathers. The arc is not dramatic. It is a steady excavation. That steady excavation is the album’s engine.

The initial reception was warm and particular. Upon its March 15, 2024 release Deeper Well earned generally favorable reviews. Aggregators such as Metacritic placed it solidly into positive territory. Critics praised the album’s pared-back arrangements and Musgraves’ return to a folk-inflected palette while noting that its modesty could sometimes feel underpowered next to the full-throated risk-taking of Golden Hour. Reviewers singled out songs like “Anime Eyes” and “The Architect” as the record’s most striking moments.**

Commercially the album marked a high point. Deeper Well debuted at number two on the Billboard 200, with approximately 97,000 equivalent album units in its first week and strong traditional album sales. The record topped the Top Country Albums and Americana/Folk Albums charts and posted the biggest vinyl sales week of 2024 up to that point, with vinyl contributing a substantial portion of its first-week totals. The label and press materials described it as Musgraves’ biggest sales debut to date. Those are concrete measures. They describe an audience ready to own the music in hand as well as in stream.**

Awards and honors followed. The song “The Architect” won the Grammy Award for Best Country Song at the 2025 ceremony. The album itself received nominations in country categories and became a talking point during awards season as an example of contemporary country that values restraint and craft. The win for “The Architect” in particular affirmed the record’s songwriting credentials and brought renewed attention to the quieter songs on the album.**

The cultural footprint was small but resonant. Musgraves supported the release with the Deeper Well World Tour, beginning in April and continuing through December 2024, with high-profile support slots and festival dates. She staged pop-up farmer’s-market merchandise events tied to the deluxe release and collaborated commercially with Boy Smells on a candle scent that echoed the album’s earthy aesthetics. The record had influence not via imitation but by example. It suggested to a number of singer-songwriters that commercial success and intimate, domestic music need not be opposites.**

Looking back, the album matters for its quiet insistence. It did not alter the map of pop music. It did not try to. Instead it offered a set of songs that insist on attention to small signs, to the ethics of friendship, and to domestic forms of spiritual questioning. For younger artists watching her choices it demonstrated another route: produce carefully, collaborate in trusted circles, record in storied rooms, and build an audience that chooses to own your records as much as to stream them. That combination shaped how the record was seen in the years immediately after its release and how it continued to be referenced by peers and critics alike.