Kris Angelis has been telling stories through songs since she was a young girl growing up on a farm in Florida with her identical twin sister in their backyard treehouse, dreaming of one day taking center stage in a Broadway musical. That dream has taken many twists and turns since the singer-songwriter released her debut album, The Left Atrium, and that journey has produced her sixth and most accomplished record yet in the playful, heartfelt, autobiographical "Le Sigh", her first for acclaimed LA. indie Blue Elan Records.

“The original concept for the record was unsent letters, the things you want to say to people you really can’t,” she said of the album’s intended title.

The initial track, “Dear Me,” a letter to her past younger self from the present, a prelude to these 10 tracks, which form an interior conversation in a universe whose imagery unspools like a film. “Here I am taking one step at a time/No footprints ahead, when I look back, they’re mine.”

The focus cut, “Goodbye Captain Fantastic,” is both a bittersweet nod to the Elton John album and a ballad about love, memory and the quiet aftermath of a farewell letter to a former partner – soulful, intimate and full of emotional color. “It explores the tender act of preserving someone in art when you can no longer hold them in life,” explains Kris, who co-wrote the song with Abby Posner and Mary Scholz. “How heartbreaking it can be when someone can’t see themselves the way you see them.”

Other notable songs from the album include the bluesy, Bonnie Raitt strains of “Is That You?” another song of lost love and ghostly presences (“Will you forgive me/For not being brave enough/For being so young/Not knowing I’d won/Not calling my own bluff”) and the title track, an atmospheric song that offers the tongue-in-cheek tale of a doomed romantic triangle, the aural equivalent of Francois Truffaut’s French nouvelle vague classic, Jules and Jim, and “The Girl from Ipanema,” with a suitable Continental, samba-like flavor crossed with a spaghetti western.

“It’s a little bit of making fun of myself for being so dramatic,” she admits as to why she picked the title to name the album. “I tend to find the humor to deflect even the most heart-wrenching sentiment. All of the songs kind of have that feeling, a deep, self-centering sigh. Going through these painful experiences are all part of my growth as a person and artist.”

The wistful, plaintive “Last Call Train” is about waiting for a lover who never shows up, ignoring others who offer shelter from the rain (“It’s getting late it’s getting colder/Waiting here defines insane”).

“You know what they say about insanity,” she laughs. “Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”

“Read My Mind” is a dramatic song that is a combination of Shirley Bassey’s “Goldfinger” and Julie London’s “Cry Me a River” with an orchestral backing that would make it an excellent James Bond title theme, alongside a simmering sexuality that offers a new side to Kris.

“I wrote that with Mallory Trunnell and Lauren Harding of Crimson Calamity,” she says. “It brought out something in me I hadn’t really explored before.”

Produced by Rachael Moore (T-Bone Burnett, Robert Plant/Alison Krauss) at Middletree Studios in Nashville, the new album features a stellar cast of supporting musicians, including drummer Jamie Dick and bassist/cellist Brian Allen, guitarists Joe Pisapia, Russ Paul and Sean Thompson, piano/synth player Will Honaker, horns by Will Hawley, violinist Jeb Bows and background vocalists Mallory Trunnell and Laura Harding.

Moving to Los Angeles to pursue acting, Kris’ main focus soon turned to songwriting, inspired by Brandi Carlile and her band whom she met while they were opening for Hanson (one of Kris’s favorite bands growing up). She became friendly with her guitarists, Phil and Tim Hanseroth, bonding over their mutual twin status.  It was Tim who gifted Kris with her very first guitar and taught her how to play it, while Brandi and he proved to be an enduring influence on her development as both singer and songwriter.

After releasing her debut album, The Left Atrium, Kris followed with the “Heartbreak is Contagious” EP (2017), then the albums Pieces That Were Stolen (2018) and That Siren, Hope (2020), produced by Bill Lefler and co-written with Garrison Starr, inspired by her pre-Covid tour of 100 shows in 50 states over three months in her little blue Prius. That album debuted at #1 on the iTunes singer/songwriter chart and the highest-ranking independent release that week on the BillboardTop Current Albums chart, earning her a selection for the Grammy NEXT program.

Kris kept busy during Covid in 2020 with livestream performances from the UnCancelled Festival, Folk Alliance Unlocked showcases and Happy Hour for the Guild of Music Supervisors with KT Tunstall, Live from the Hotel Café, RoadNation’s Road-Less series and more. Her next album, 2021’s The Skies We Look To, peaked at #1 on the iTunes singer/songwriter chart while “I’d Give Anything” was featured in American Songwriter, landed on New Music Nashville, Next from Nashville and Indigo OfficialSpotify playlists, then charted for 15 weeks on Americana radio. Her most recent album, Damn Shame Waste (2022) featured “Run” and “Win the Game,” the #1 and #3 most played new adds on SiriusXM’s The Loft, as well as being featured on iHeartRadio after she was the top fundraising artist for MusicBeats Cancer in March. She also performed in Las Vegas at the Life is Beautiful Music and Arts Festival as part of the Rising Stars stage in September of that year.

Now that the album is complete and about to be released, Kris – currently living in Carmel - will once again head out in her Prius, acoustic in hand, to play these new songs, and plenty of the old favorites, too, to her growing fan base, both here and overseas in Japan, where her fiancée in the Navy is now stationed.

“I would love to be able to afford to have a full-time band one day,” she said, a modern-day wandering troubadour. “But until then, it’s just me and my guitar.”