Flora from Kansas is confessional, professional, and international

Photo Courtesy of Melodic Records

Back in March of 2021, we got a tip about a new LFK artist worth digging into. She was a teenager who performed and released music as Flora from Kansas. Her then just-released EP entitled Keep Calling had ‘90s throwback vibes, but mixed with the confessional style of artists like Phoebe Bridgers or Snail Mail. It was only five songs, but we absolutely fell in love with the EP’s penultimate track, “Better Off Alone” and had it on repeat. 

Next came the 2022’s full-length cassette called Emerald City—along with music videos, and live performances at venues like the Replay Lounge and Farewell, it looked like Flora was poised to be our area’s next big breakout star.

Then two years of silence.

Photo Courtesy of Melodic Records

That broke in late November of 2024, when UK’s Melodic Records announced they’d signed the singer-songwriter and would be releasing her next project, the Homesick EP, in March of 2025. Mixed by Ali Chant, a producer and engineer who’s worked on albums for everyone from Portishead to Soccer Mommy, the new EP’s release has been preceded by three singles: the aptly-titled “Remember Me,” short-but-sweet “Clothes,” and the achingly sad but beautiful “The Ghost is Me.”

That last song, which kicks off Homesick, was featured on the Jan. 28 NPR Music podcast, All Songs Considered, “The Contenders, Vol. 3,” which saw host Robin Hilton—himself a Kansas native—describing the song’s repeating piano line as “unnerving, but addictive at the same time,” and that the song overall was “so gloomy, but [Flora’s] voice is kind of lovely and the melody has this twinge of hope in it.”

We sat down with Flora, her father Dan Billen, and music video director Marc Havener to discuss the musician’s return and the visually stunning Carnival of Souls-inspired video for “The Ghost is Me.” While Flora is the voice of this project, she writes her songs with Dan, who’s frequently worked with Havener over the years. Part of it, Flora says, is due to where she is in school and what her post-graduation plans might entail.

“Since I’m a senior and I’m in my last semester, when you’re a senior you start thinking like, ‘What’s gonna happen after high school?’” says the singer of her thought process. “And for me this is it. This is all I’m thinking of, but it’s funny because I’m already in it.”

Starting one’s final semester of high school after signing to a UK record label, then making music videos and all the attendant social media posts required can be taxing, making her father’s guidance incredibly beneficial. Especially when it comes to the execution of music videos. 

While “The Ghost is Me” and its paired visuals are minimalist, they feel much bigger than they are. Director Havener concurs when we offer up that assessment, saying that the song has an epic emotional minimalism to it, and he was attracted to the idea of making a music video with those same qualities.

“Often, when we think about what music videos look like, they’re very kinetic,” Havener says. “Lots of cuts. It was fun to just do one that sits on an image for a while.”

The video was shot at Lawrence’s Trinity Episcopal Church, which Flora and her family attend, and it’s also where several scenes for Herk Harvey’s cult horror classic Carnival of Souls were filmed. While several scenes within it nod to the original film, just one shot in the music video exactly mirrors a shot within Carnival of Souls. While the video is minimalist, shooting still took an entire day, but Havener says that the singer’s rare-to-find professionalism made it easy.

Also rare? A 17-year-old young woman writing emotionally confessional songs with her 40-something dad. One could maybe look to a similar partnership between Billie Eilish and her brother, Finneas, for parallels but we had to wonder if it was at all awkward and weird for Flora, or if it was just that the father-daughter relationship is good enough that she feels comfortable sharing?

“Well, my dad—He’s a very open person, so I’ve never been scared to tell him anything about my personal life,” Flora says. “We have therapy sessions, where we’ll go on a drive for, like, an hour and we’ll just talk about everything. We’ve always done stuff like that, so this was nothing different.”

Flora from Kansas is now spotlighted on a worldwide stage, with NPR selecting her music as one of “The songs we can’t stop playing this week,” regular airplay on the BBC, and having been added to over 250 Spotify playlists. Considering her international pull, after Homesick is released and she graduates, Flora is most likely to head off to stages distant from the local area, because the fans are popping up in pockets globally—a long journey for tracks recorded in their home studio.

“It’s been all around the world and there’s an irony to that,” Dan reflects. “Some of her songs she did on her phone in her room, so for it to go from her phone, then to the UK, to Germany, it’s just like, ‘What the heck?’ Pretty cool.”

Flora from Kansas’ Homesick releases digitally on Friday, March 14, via Melodic Records.