claire rousay is a Canadian-American experimental / ambient / emo ambient sound artist and composer from Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Based in Los Angeles as of her recent work, she is known for combining field recordings, voice, minimalist structures, and timbral exploration into deeply emotional sonic landscapes.

Rousay was born in Winnipeg and moved to San Antonio, Texas at age 10. She studied piano early and played drums in church settings before leaving formal schooling at 15 to follow a self-directed musical path. Her early career focused on percussion and improvisational performance with collaborators across the experimental community.

Her discography spans both ambient and more lyrical directions. Key works include it was always worth it (2020), a softer focus (2021, via American Dreams), and Sentiment (2024, via Thrill Jockey). sentiment is often described as a turning point: she embraces vocal melodies, auto-tune, and more structured song forms while retaining her signature use of found sound and emotional subtlety. (She also has a forthcoming album a little death slated for 2025.) She has collaborated closely with Mari “more eaze” Maurice, notably releasing no floor in 2025.

Rousay’s creative themes revolve around intimacy, queerness, memory, perception, and the poetic potential of the everyday. Even her quietest works feel like sonic diaries — in which the small noises of life become whole universes.
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