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1. Hi Sam, welcome to VENTS! How have you been?
I’ve been great! Busy, but in a good way. I’ve spent so much of the last year writing, recording and figuring out what I wanted this next chapter of my music to actually feel like. Now that “cave in” is coming out and low impact is starting to become a real thing outside of the studio, it feels like I can finally let people into this world I’ve been living in for a while. I’m excited — and definitely a little nervous but mostly just ready for people to hear it.
2. Your new single “cave in” explores the feeling of losing control while still holding on to hope. What personal or emotional experience first sparked the song?
“cave in” really came from that feeling of knowing things aren’t going the way you thought they would, but still trying to convince yourself that you can hold everything together.
I think I was going through a period where a lot of things in my life felt uncertain at the same time. Nothing was necessarily completely falling apart, but I could feel myself becoming overwhelmed by things I couldn’t control. That feeling became more interesting to me than writing about one specific situation.
There’s a line between being hopeful and almost desperately trying to remain hopeful, and that’s where “cave in” lives. It’s that moment where you’re telling yourself everything is going to be okay while another part of you isn’t totally sure you believe it.
3. The track is described as both “wide-open and claustrophobic.” How did you use atmospheric guitars, production, and vocal delivery to create that tension?
That contrast was really important to the production. I love music that can sound enormous but somehow still feel like it’s happening inside your head.
There are these atmospheric guitars and textures that create a lot of space around the vocal, but underneath that, there are sounds constantly pushing against each other. As the song develops, more layers start creeping in and that space gradually feels smaller.
Vocally, I didn’t want to overpower that. A lot of the delivery is intentionally close and restrained. It feels almost like you’re hearing someone’s internal dialogue while this huge environment is forming around them.
That push and pull became a big part of low impact in general beautiful sounds next to uncomfortable ones, organic instruments against electronic textures, and really intimate vocals living inside these much bigger productions.
4. “cave in” does a great job capturing the experience of being trapped inside your own thoughts while everything around you moves too quickly. How do you approach translating an internal, difficult-to-express feeling into something listeners can immediately connect with?
I try not to explain the emotion too much.
I used to think songwriting meant finding the perfect words to describe exactly what happened to you. Now I’m almost more interested in leaving space around it. If I can capture what something felt like rather than explain exactly what happened, someone else can put their own life into the song.
Sometimes that means a lyric. Sometimes it’s the way I sing a word, a guitar that sounds like it’s about to fall apart, or something in the production that makes you uncomfortable without necessarily knowing why.
That’s one of my favourite things about music. Someone can hear “cave in” and connect it to a completely different experience than the one I had while writing it, but emotionally we’re still meeting in the same place.
5. There is a restless, forward-moving quality to the production that mirrors the song’s overwhelming subject matter. What role did rhythm, arrangement, and dynamics play in shaping that sense of urgency?
A huge role. We wanted the song to feel like it’s constantly moving toward something, even when the vocal feels more controlled.
The arrangement keeps evolving underneath you. Elements appear, disappear and build on each other, so there isn’t really a point where the song completely settles. That was intentional because it mirrors the headspace behind the lyrics you’re trying to slow everything down while your thoughts just keep moving.
Dynamics have become really important to me in general. I love when a song earns its biggest moments instead of being at 100 percent the entire time. When something finally opens up or hits harder, it means more because you’ve felt the tension leading up to it.
6. You have surpassed 2.5 million streams and received support from platforms including Spotify’s New Music Friday, YouTube’s Pop Before It Breaks, and Amazon Music’s Brand New Music. How have those milestones affected your relationship with your audience and your approach to releasing music?
Those moments are amazing because they can introduce your music to someone who never would have found you otherwise. I’m incredibly grateful for all of them.
At the same time, I think I’ve learned not to let those things dictate whether I consider a release successful.
It’s really easy as an independent artist to become obsessed with numbers streams, playlists, followers, views. I’ve definitely been guilty of that. But some of the most meaningful reactions I’ve received have been one person messaging me and explaining what a song meant to them.
Going into low impact, I’m trying to focus much more on building that kind of relationship with listeners. Obviously I want the music to reach as many people as possible, but I’d rather have someone genuinely care about the album than hear one song once because an algorithm put it in front of them.
7. As an Indigenous Music Award winner and International Songwriting Competition semifinalist, how have your experiences and identity informed your songwriting, even when the songs are not explicitly autobiographical?
I think everything you experience becomes part of the way you write, whether you’re consciously trying to put it into a song or not.
My songs aren’t always explicitly about my identity or one specific event in my life, but they’re still being written through my perspective. Where I grew up, my family, the people around me, the music I was exposed to and the different communities I’ve been part of all affect how I see things.
I’ve never wanted to force those parts of myself into a song because I think people can tell when something isn’t honest. I’d rather let them exist naturally in the way I tell stories and the things I’m drawn to emotionally.
Ultimately, songwriting for me is about trying to find something human enough that someone with a completely different life can still recognize themselves in it.
8. You have performed sold-out Canadian Music Week showcases, reached the Top 50 on Canada’s Got Talent, and secured international sync placements. What have these different experiences taught you about presenting your music to audiences in different settings?
They’ve taught me that a song has to survive in completely different environments.
Playing a packed showcase is very immediate. You have a room full of people in front of you, and you can tell almost instantly whether they’re connecting. Something like Canada’s Got Talent taught me about performing under pressure and communicating who you are very quickly.
Sync is completely different because you’re hearing your music become part of someone else’s story. A song you wrote about one thing can suddenly be paired with an image or scene and take on another meaning entirely.
All of those experiences made me think beyond just making a good recording. I’m constantly thinking about how a song exists live, how it works visually and what kind of world it belongs to.
That’s definitely influenced low impact. I’m thinking about the album as an entire experience rather than just a collection of recordings.
9. Your upcoming full-length album is titled low impact. What does that title mean to you, and how does it connect to the emotional or musical themes introduced by “cave in”?
I love the title because there’s something almost ironic about it.
A lot of the things that have the biggest impact on us don’t necessarily arrive dramatically. They’re small things that accumulate relationships changing, expectations, anxiety, getting older, questioning what you’re doing with your life. Individually they can seem almost insignificant, but eventually you realize they’ve completely changed you.
That’s where low impact came from for me.
Musically, there’s a similar contrast throughout the album. There are really quiet and vulnerable moments sitting beside distorted guitars, electronic production and these huge walls of sound. Sometimes the smallest sound in a song ends up carrying the most emotional weight.
“cave in” introduces that idea really well. It’s about something happening internally that nobody around you may even recognize, while to you it feels enormous.
10. With low impact leading into your first touring circuit in 2027, what can listeners expect from this next chapter, both sonically and in the way you plan to bring these songs to the stage?
I think people are going to hear a much less guarded version of me.
Sonically, low impact pushes further into alternative music while still keeping the songwriting and melodies that have always been important to me. There are atmospheric guitars, distortion, electronic textures, live instrumentation and some moments that get pretty heavy, but there are also songs that are incredibly exposed and simple.
I wanted the album to feel cohesive without every song sounding the same. It’s more like they all exist in the same universe.
Live, I want to take that even further. I’m not interested in just recreating the record perfectly every night. I want these songs to breathe, change and sometimes get louder, heavier or more vulnerable onstage.
With the 2027 shows, we’re building something that feels immersive and dynamic — a show where there can be a huge wall of sound one minute and then everything disappears and it’s just a voice or an instrument the next.
I’ve spent a long time figuring out what I wanted this next version of Sam Louis to be. low impact feels like I’ve finally stopped trying to figure it out and just started being it.
