Every song from Little Hopes is a secret passage into their wildly charmed corner of the American South—a timeworn wonderland of honeysuckles and kudzu, porch swings and boxed wine, grandiose thunderstorms and glittering night skies. Since forming the Atlanta-based duo in 2022, singer/songwriters Sydney Rhame and Brock Shanks have created their own enchanted take on Americana/country-rock, suffusing their storytelling with the kind of lived-in detail that lights up all the senses and pulls the listener deep into their lavish world. Mainly recorded in their former home (a hundred-year-old bungalow possibly on the verge of being condemned), Little Hopes’ debut album Georgia bottles up the ragged beauty of their surroundings, ultimately bringing a much-needed magic to songs of loss, longing, and the often-heartbreaking work of chasing your dreams.

Both Georgia natives (Rhame grew up in Atlanta, Shanks hails from the small town of Rockmart), the two lifelong musicians linked up through a mutual friend back in 2020, when Rhame hired Shanks to film a video for her former solo project. As their relationship evolved from friends to romantic partners, they began writing songs together and discovered an ineffable chemistry—an element that quickly undid the disillusionment they’d endured in past musical experiences. To that end, Rhame got her start writing songs and playing guitar at age seven, later landing a record deal that left her with virtually no artistic control. Meanwhile, Shanks learned to play guitar from his older brother (esteemed session player and Blackberry Smoke member Benji Shanks) and spent years working as a guitar tech in Nashville, then abandoned his musical dreams and moved to Atlanta to focus on photography. “For a long time I thought the goal was to be incredibly technically proficient so I could jump onto any stage and impress everyone with my playing, but eventually I realized that’s not my purpose,” says Shanks. “When Sydney and I started playing together, it somehow reignited what we’d both always wanted to do. Right away it felt like coming home.”

Produced by Little Hopes, mixed by Paul Voran (Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats, Hurray for the Riff Raff), and mastered by Tim Smiley (The Head and The Heart, Houndmouth), Georgia fully harnesses the warm and free-flowing energy they’ve brought to the stage in opening for the likes of Old Crow Medicine Show, John Paul White, and Blackberry Smoke frontman Charlie Starr. In dreaming up the album’s harmony-drenched sound, the duo tapped into their eclectic sensibilities (e.g., Shanks’ affinity for country legends like Hank Williams and Merle Haggard, Rhame’s passion for classic soul and Motown), achieving a certain nostalgic quality even as their songs wander into sonically daring directions. Made with a close-knit lineup of musicians including pedal-steel player Scotty Murray (Stephen Wilson Jr., Kameron Marlowe), drummer Darren Dodd (Anderson East, Maddie Medley), and Benji Shanks on dobro, the 13-song LP opens on its luminous title track: a lovely introduction to their delicately layered songwriting, doubling as a valentine to each other and to their cherished homeland. “Especially in the summer, Georgia is so lush and beautiful and swampy and vibrant,” says Rhame. “With the album overall, we wanted to recreate that feeling of being in love in the hot, sweaty South in the absolute peak of summertime.”

While much of Georgia inhabits a soul-soothing ease, Little Hopes never shy away from exploring the exquisite pain of heartbreak, often transforming their hurt into strangely timeless love songs. On “Maxine,” the duo deliver a bittersweet slow-burner penned for the long-lost friend who introduced them, channeling both wide-eyed yearning and heavy-hearted remorse (“I got drunk on your daydreams/Believed everything you claimed to be/A rhinestone cowboy, a trash-talking poet that the world should know/A Pabst-soaked savior with your mama’s eyes and a heart of gold”). Meanwhile, on “Angel Of The Road,” Little Hopes offer up a lilting piece of country-folk inspired by a moment of painful stagnancy in Shanks’ life, spinning his frustration into a lovesick fantasy of unbridled freedom. One of Georgia’s most upbeat tracks, “Best Is Yet To Come” first came to Rhame and Shanks while holed up in a Utah saloon in the middle of a blizzard, then evolved into a feel-good anthem of fearless determination. And on the gorgeously twangy “Wildflower Highways,” Little Hopes present a tenderly nuanced portrait of small-town languor. “In my hometown people will sit on the front porch all day long and wave at the people who drive by—that’s all they’ve got to do,” says Shanks. “‘Wildflower Highways’ came from wondering what it would feel like to slow down and live your life that way, and how the idea of that is equally depressing and enticing.”

True to the serendipity that’s guided much of their musical partnership, Little Hopes took their name from a novel they spotted at a bookstore on a rainy day by the beach. “At the surface level, the phrase ‘little hope’ might have a negative connotation—but we love the idea of a little hope going a long way, because that’s what this journey has been for us,” says Rhame. “Sometimes a little hope is just enough to get you to the next thing, and it’s maybe more sustainable than a life of intense highs and lows,” Shanks adds. “You need to do what it takes to keep the forward momentum going, especially when things get hard. Because the truth is there’s a lot of days where you could easily be convinced to give up—but now there’s nothing in us that would ever give up.”