Bebe Stockwell: 2025

This  FUV Live session is also available as a podcast, "FUV Live Sessions." We're elevating WFUV's long history of live sessions and interviews via a podcast that you can find on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Amazon Podcasts. New episodes drop every Monday.

Bebe Stockwell is only in her early 20s, but she's an old soul as a songwriter. The songs on Stockwell's debut EP, Driving Backwards, available now on Columbia Records, are well-crafted and mature, full of descriptive details and thoughtful observations.

"Minor Inconveniences" is a delightful little ditty with a laundry list of familiar events, evoking a light sigh and shaking of the head: we've all experienced burnt toast, bad milk, and cold feet on a wet floor. Sweetly sung over a pretty guitar melody, "Minor Inconveniences" leaves the listener — like me — feeling contented.

Stockwell's references evoke threads of California's Laurel Canyon scene of the '70s and Bob Dylan. While Stockwell doesn't do an impersonation of Dylan, she does channel his spirit in her concise writing.

The Boston-born, Los Angeles-based Stockwell told me in our interview that older music intrigues her, because the "voices sound so cozy." In an aside, she also observed that her face does not match her music or vocal range; she's convinced that she looks like someone who would sing a lot higher than she actually does.

Her voice is actually quite dynamic, soaring on "Blue Moon," one of three songs from Driving Backwards that Stockwell and her bandmate, guitarist Natalie Moosher, played in this FUV Live session, along with "Want Me."

[Recorded: 6/17/25; Engineered by Jim O'Hara, Erin Merriman, and Matthew Ellersick. Produced by Meghan Suma. Videographers: Olivia Iannaccone, Nikki Phillips, and Alena Godas.]