A soul-poet with a fresh spin on '70s folk-rock, McCarthy has spent two decades turning the ordinary pathos and chaos of being human into songs that hit somewhere between Brandi Carlile's grit, Joni Mitchell's ache and Bob Dylan's ridicule. Six albums in, her latest, Force Majeure, won Best Alt-Folk Song at the 2021 International Songdoor Competition and picked up two category wins at the West Coast Songwriters International Song Contest.

She's played the Ryman Auditorium (the original Grand Ole Opry) and shared stages with Melissa Etheridge, Janis Ian, and Laurie Lewis. Raised in LA as the daughter of longtime LA Daily News columnist Dennis McCarthy, she landed in the Bay Area upon attending UC Berkeley, cutting her teeth at Freight & Salvage, Sweetwater, and Great American Music Hall, and later fronting the folk-rock trio She's Out There. A stint in Athens, GA's indie scene in the late '90s means her songs still carry a little Southern dust.

When she's not writing solo or performing duo, she's the lyricist and voice behind Of Love and Lust's "Calm In Your Eyes" — a quarter-million streams and counting.