The forthcoming debut album from Katie Pruitt, Expectations, is a glowingly detailed collection of real-life stories, a courageous document of coming of age in a sometimes-unwelcoming world. With a narrative voice at turns poetic and unaffected, the Georgia-bred singer/songwriter/guitarist treads endlessly complex emotional ground: mental illness, toxic relationships, the frustration and shame of growing up gay in the Christian South. But by speaking her truth with sensitivity and grit, Pruitt ultimately arrives at a self-acceptance that’s both hard-won and happily defiant.

“I called the album Expectations because I liked that it was ironic,” says the 25-year-old artist, now based in Nashville. “This record’s really about letting go of what other people expect from you, and being free to be to just finally be yourself.”

Co-produced by Pruitt and her close friend Michael Robinson at the home studio of Rounder Records’ Gary Paczosa, Expectations gracefully showcases her captivating voice—an instrument that alternately soars and howls and softens to a near-whisper. And while the album unfolds in a guitar-fueled sound steeped in folk and country and rock-and-roll, each track stays centered on the lucid songwriting that recently landed Pruitt on a “20 Artists To Watch In 2019” from NPR.

Katie Pruitt’s album Expectations is due out February 21, 2020, on Rounder Records.