[Cover photo credit to Emma Ogilvie]

After working in the Washington, DC music scene for a decade, Annie Stokes decided that she was ready to write the type of album she’d always dreamed of. She and her husband and songwriting partner, Will Berger, wrote from a cabin by the Shenandoah River for a weekend and sketched out the bones of what would become Ghostwriter. The album has just been released on April 4th, 2025.

Built around themes of “grief, belonging, and permanence,” the album also “visits topics of gender dymanics and double standards, the lingering ache for validation from past friends and lovers, reclaiming boundaries in the digital age, and the intense, alchemical friendship young women experience in their twenties.”

Ghostwriter began to take form with Producer and co-writer Austin Bello, who collaborated on 2023’s Wild Rose EP. Stokes used banjo as a rhythm instrument, while Berger used the bass. Marty Garfield, who joins Stokes on stage as part of her live line-up, added fiddle.

The result is a collection of “dark-hued, modern Americana music firmly rooted in Folk songwriting tradition.”

While recording this album in the spring and summer of 2024, Stokes also independently toured the East Coast, began hosting songwriter showcases in her hometown of Leesburg, VA, and parented her two young daughters. With Ghostwriter, Stokes “hopes to crystallize and honor some of the sacred, ordinary experiences of everyday living.”