Mercedes Brown EPK
Mercedes Brown, the Wet’suwet’en & Tsimshian singer-songwriter whose sound reaches back to a time when rock music was built on grit and truth, releases her debut single “Playing With Fire” out now on all major platforms. The track arrives ahead of her debut album 'Light The Fire,' due June 19, 2026, on Small Frog Records, and it announces an artist of rare instinct and intention: a young writer who arrived at this song not through calculation, but through the kind of unguarded honesty that makes rock music matter.
“Playing With Fire” is the kind of debut that leaves no ambiguity about who Mercedes Brown is or what she is here to say. Built on a churning alt-rock foundation and driven by a vocal performance that is at once restrained and explosive, the song traces the edge between control and collapse with unsettling clarity.
Recorded at Ukee Sound Studio in Ucluelet, BC, “Light the Fire” is produced by Brent Halfyard, who also plays bass and guitars on the album. The album also features Peter Esquivel, Matthew Brown, Brent Halfyard, Chris Potter, Jon Roper, Vincent Jones, Timmy Proznick and Ashwin Sood. Mixing and mastering were handled by Chris Potter. The production is deliberate and assured, leaning into the analogue warmth and textural grit that Brown’s songwriting demands, and giving her vocals the space to move between vulnerability and defiance without losing either. It is a sound that references the alt-rock era Brown grew up loving without being beholden to it: music that means something, made by people who understand that distinction.
With 'Light The Fire' arriving June 19, 2026, “Playing With Fire” is the first single that is the opening declaration of an artist ready to be heard. Mercedes Brown performs as a solo artist, in duo configurations, and with her full band featuring Ezra Beaton on guitar and vocals, Brent Halfyard on bass and vocals, and Jim Ljungh on drums.
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