Candi Carpenter announces new alt-rock EP and visual short film, ‘Reincarnation’
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Newsdesk
Six songs. Six genre realities. One resurrection story.
Queer, autistic singer-songwriter, producer, and multidisciplinary artist Candi Carpenter (they/them) is set to release their new alt-rock EP, Reincarnation, this September. A genre-blurring musical and visual project about deconstructing toxic religion, identity, sexuality, healing, and the strange beauty of being alive, Reincarnation finds Carpenter shedding old versions of themself and stepping into something entirely new.
Carpenter has already lived many lives. A former gospel prodigy raised in a Christian Missionary Alliance pastor's family, they grew up performing in churches across the Midwest with their family's gospel band, The Carpenter’s (no, not the famous Carpenters). After dropping out of high school and moving to Nashville, Carpenter toured with Grand Ole Opry legends, landed a Billboard country single, and eventually made their own Grand Ole Opry debut.
Now, Carpenter is transforming that history into something altogether different.
Dolly Parton has called Carpenter "one of the greatest singer-songwriters I've ever heard, bar none," while Brandi Carlile, Carpenter's one-time producer and collaborator, has praised their extraordinary voice and storytelling. Rolling Stone described Carpenter as "a devastatingly direct singer with... an axe to grind," and To The Point Music declared them "one of those once-in-a-lifetime talents." Carpenter has performed on BBC 2, Good Morning Britain, TLC, NBC, and other major networks, while amassing hundreds of millions of views across social media.
Following their 2024 alt-pop debut Demonology, which fans have embraced as an indie cult classic, Carpenter returns with Reincarnation, a six-track project that pushes their music, filmmaking, acting, and world-building into stranger and darker territory.
"Every day, about one percent of your body dies," Carpenter explains. "Most of what dies regenerates. In one lifetime, we are many different people: different timelines, different outcomes, alternate realities. I believe in reincarnation because I'm a different person every single day."
The EP is also a deeply personal response to Carpenter's experience growing up evangelical and the process of rebuilding a sense of self after leaving that world behind. Reincarnation explores what it means to be "born again" in a secular sense, asking who Carpenter might have become if they had never been taught to fear the parts of themself that now inspire their art.
"I make art to peel myself back, like the bananas and apples rotting on my kitchen counter," Carpenter says. "This EP was my chance to try on the genres I wasn't allowed to explore growing up in the church."
Built on an indie budget, Reincarnation expands beyond music into an ambitious visual short film. Each of the EP's six songs has its own music video, with every chapter connecting to the next to create one cohesive, presently-apocalyptic rock opera.
Carpenter and their friends constructed a trash dump inside a warehouse and filmed the project over the course of a week. Set in a zombie-filled garbage world, the film uses deliberately blunt symbolism and a shifting visual palette to create what Carpenter calls a "filthy rainbow."
Each song represents a different side of Carpenter and a different genre reality, with the six tracks moving through themes of mortality, capitalism, fear, simulation, sexuality, religion, and rebellion.
The project also features rock icon Jane Wiedlin of The Go-Go's, who appears in the short film and describes Carpenter as "a voraciously creative person, a one-of-a-kind treasure, and a musical/lyrical magician."
"Their new short film, REINCARNATION, is relentlessly original and thought-provoking," Wiedlin adds. "Candi is the real deal. The brightest dark star I've ever met."
For Carpenter, the process was as much about healing as it was about making art.
"This project gave me the chance not only to challenge myself musically but also to grow as a director, actor, and world-builder," they say. "I wanted this EP to help me heal the parts of myself that were still secretly bruised. Reincarnation was a massive undertaking, but the concept actually worked. I'm releasing this project as a completely different person than whoever I was when I started it."
Reincarnation opens with its title track, an existential meditation on the constantly changing nature of identity. "I'm not the same person I was last month," Carpenter says. "I'm not the same person I was last year. I believe in reincarnation because I'm a different person every single day."
"Little Freak" turns its attention toward capitalism and disposability, imagining love as the one force worth being consumed by. "If something is going to use me up, let it be love," Carpenter says. "When they throw me away, I want to be your garbage."
"The Fear of Being Human Remains" confronts the terror of consciousness itself. Death is not Carpenter's greatest fear. Existing inside a body, trapped within the limits of human experience, is far more frightening.
"Inside the Simulation" questions reality through the lens of Carpenter's evangelical upbringing, where death once carried the terrifying possibility of eternal punishment. Against that fear, the song offers love as perhaps the only thing that feels real.
"Biblically Accurate Angel" explores sexuality, shame, and the experience of being taught to demonize what might actually be sacred. Carpenter's vision of an angel becomes a metaphor for encountering beauty that religious doctrine once taught them to fear.
Closing the EP, "American God" is Carpenter at their most confrontational, rejecting systems that demand obedience and reduce people to roles they never agreed to play. It ends with a declaration of self-determination: "I am my own church."
Together, the songs form a resurrection story about leaving behind inherited beliefs, confronting the wreckage, and choosing what gets rebuilt.
This fall, Carpenter will take Reincarnation on a co-headlining cross-country tour with fellow indie powerhouse Moselle, beginning with an all-star EP release show in Nashville on September 12.
Audiences can expect deconstructed church, a cinematic live experience, and a crowd singing along to every word.
"I want my shows to be a safe space for people who are looking for the community we lost when we found ourselves," Carpenter says. "My hope is that everyone goes home feeling less alone."
Candi Carpenter has already lived many lives: gospel prodigy, Opry prodigal child, Billboard country artist, alt-rock shapeshifter, dissenting ex-vangelical prophet. With Reincarnation, they are not returning to who they were.
They are becoming someone else.
Again.
After earning praise from outlets including Rolling Stone, Billboard Magazine, Forbes, Broadway World, American Songwriter, Carpenter enters their most audacious era yet with Reincarnation, a wildly inventive collision of alt-rock, theatricality, and spiritual deconstruction that proves their singular voice is only getting harder to contain.
