Selken is the bummer Pop and Indie Rock project of Chicago songwriter Heather Styka. Selken’s debut album, The Winds, will arrive on October 24th, 2025, and is a “cathartic exploration of personal and societal sea change, of burying old dreams to make room for new ones.”

After over a decade of touring nationally, and releasing five albums as a solo Folk artist, Styka was grounded like the rest of world in 2020, which allowed her to realize she that she wanted to shift from solo acoustic songwriter to a full band.

Styka teamed up with producer/multi-instrumentalist JG Shadid to create Selken. Styka and Shadid met at The Red Room in Chicago’s Bucktown neighborhood. Shadid’s expertise as an Emmy-nominated composer, educator on YouTube’s Reverb channel, Folk songwriter, and founder of Gentle Bear Studio made him an ideal collaborator for Styka.

Shadid and Styka tracked the record for over a year, meeting weekly in Shadid’s Chicago studio “to strip down each song to the melody and build up the layers through collaborative experimentation.”

In their live performances, Styka swaps her acoustic guitar for an electric bass, Shadid becomes the band’s piano/synth player and electric guitarist, and Jake Hawrylak, lead singer and songwriter of his own band, Maiden King, plays drums.

While Selken explores and embraces a larger sonic palette than Styka’s previous solo efforts, the resulting album, The Winds, represents an evolution of the artist and songwriter. The Winds is a “meditation on how to survive the winds of change.”