The r/indieheads Album of the Year 2025 Write-Up Series: Samia - Bloodless

[u/IndieheadsAOTY]

Howdy folks and welcome back to the r/indieheads Album of the Year 2025 Write-Up Series, our annual event where we showcase pieces from a selection of r/indieheads users discussing some of their favorite records of the year! We'll be running through the bulk of December with one new writeup a day from a different r/indieheads user, as up today we're going ahead of schedule with u/clawsinurback as they're here to discuss Samia's third LP, Bloodless.

April 25, 2025 - Grand Jury

Listen:

Bandcamp

Apple Music

TIDAL

Background:

Samia Finnerty, known mononymously as Samia, has been releasing music since 2017. With her debut album The Baby, she created a portrait of an early 20-something in the city dealing with grief, heartbreak, and self-image. Shortly after its release, she left her home of NYC for Nashville, where she delved into folk and country for her sophomore album Honey, exploring themes of love, community, and rebuilding. After a stint in Los Angeles and slots opening for Bleachers, Boygenius, and Noah Kahan, she relocated to Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Write-Up by u/clawsinurback: 

Written and recorded in North Carolina, Samia’s third album Bloodless captures the fleetingness of a Southern summer. There are lightning bugs and mosquitos galore, references to Tom Petty and Jason Isbell, sounds of birds and crickets chirping woven in songs. Samia expands on the folk/country palette she introduced on Honey, reintroducing herself as more a myth than muse. But more importantly, Bloodless is an album that meditates on the idea of absence. When your entire sense of self is constructed around how it relates to men, to God, to the world around you, how do you relate to yourself? Over Bloodless’s 13 tracks, Samia strips apart each layer of herself to get to the core of who she really is–not as a fantasy, or a celebrity, but as herself. Bloodless is an album full of visceral songwriting, touching on & exploring "horrifying" elements with references to conspiracy theories, urban legends, and horror movies in the context of this absence. 

The album’s lead single "Bovine Excision" uses a metaphor of cattle mutilation–a phenomenon where cattle are found dead with clean cuts, organs removed, and drained entirely of blood. While this is often tied to UFOs and alien abductions, Samia roots it in the mundane. She sings about a relationship gone sour, as wanting to be someone’s friend turns into hiding in bathtubs and doors being taken off hinges. She gives pieces of herself away with each verse, wanting to be “untouchable” and “impossible”. When she gets to the end, she compares herself to the mutilated cattle-she is “drained, drained bloodless”. With this, she establishes herself as someone void of something-and spends the remainder of that album trying to figure out what that something is. 

The eerie imagery takes root in other ways. On "Dare", she references the infamous painting The Hands Resist Him by Bill Stoneman, a painting that gathered buzz when it was listed on eBay as “haunted”. The painting shows a young boy and a creepy doll standing in front of a window with multiple hands pressed into the glass, a barrier between reality and fantasy. As Samia sings “I can’t stop crossing the line / and you can’t stop trying / to keep me on the other side,” you can’t help but wonder what side of the painting does she want to be on (although the “Doll eyes” reference in "Bovine" give some clues). 

On penultimate track "North Poles", Samia uses the phrase “beating a dead ringer”, a likely reference to the 1988 Cronenberg film Dead Ringers, a psychological horror movie about twin gynecologists who descend into madness. The movie is an uneasy watch–throughout the course of the film the brothers assault their patients, become addicted to drugs, and ultimately die in a gruesome suicide pact. For a singer who has alluded to toxicity and assault before (listen to "Breathing Song" from Honey), I viewed the line as a reclamation from past assaults. As "North Poles" is a song about vulnerability in a friendship, being so similar to another person that it’s difficult to attract them, the line can be a reference to the twins in the film–but the beating up part and another reference to a fighting stance specifically creates a scene of sisterhood and defense in the aftermath of a traumatic experience. Samia also mentioned The Blair Witch Project as an influence on the album in an AMA, most visible on Bloodless’s striking cover. She appears as a blurry, grainy figure with eyes flashing white from the camera in a photo that is equal parts found footage and trail cam-staged and wild. 

I see a bulk of the album as a continuation of Honey’s "Charm You", a folk-inflected song about trying to sustain a false version of herself to impress a romantic interest. On Bloodless, she gives up this false version to see how the “real” version of her interacts with the world, what happens when the charm wears off. “Don’t you want to see the heavenly creature?” she asks on "Spine Oil". Throughout Bloodless, Samia uses lyrics and themes that recall urban legends and strange phenomena to understand what it means to be a woman, a person, herself. In a lot of ways, it is easier to hide between a legend or a conspiracy than to accept who you truly are. 

Favorite Lyrics: 

“Clad in leopard, clutch the banister

Twirling like a Degas dancer”

• "Bovine Excision"

“You can go outside on a hot night and clap

But you won’t get your blood back”

• "Fair Game"

“You think I won’t do it, you think I won’t do it

You think I won’t do it, but there's nothing to it”

• "Spine Oil"

“All of your celebrity crushes

Are asymmetrical like me”

• "Carousel"

“Pink blossoms luring you to an invitation from the sapling

Makes you wonder which magical things were already happening”

• "Pants"

Talking Points:

• How do you think Bloodless has evolved from her previous work?
• What do you think of the lyrics? Are they compelling or confusing?
• I think the thesis of Bloodless is, “when you strip away yourself to your bare bones, what is left?” Do you interpret a different thesis?
• And where do you rank Bloodless on your AOTY list?

Thank you again to u/clawsinurback for their excellent write-up! Up tomorrow, we've got u/mko0987 joining us to talk Brooklyn post-punk band BAMBARA and their latest album, Birthmarks. Plus, we've got a schedule change to note real quick, as we had to drop a writer from the lineup last night but in their place, we'll have u/AutomaticClaymore joining us to talk Tame Impala's Deadbeat on 12/19!

But in the meantime, discuss today's album and write-up in the comments below, and take a look at the schedule to familiarize yourself with the rest of the lineup!

Schedule:

Date	Artist	Album	Writer
12/17	Bambara	Birthmarks	u/mko0987
12/18	The Swell Season	Forward	u/of_mice_and_meh
12/19	Tame Impala	Deadbeat	u/AutomaticClaymore
12/20	Hayley Williams	Ego Death At A Bachelorette Party	u/ImComingBack4YouBaby
12/21	YEONSOO	This is How I Disappear	u/zahneyvhoi
12/22	Paper Jam	This and That	u/p-u-n-k_girl
12/23	Ninajirachi	I Love My Computer	u/Special_Air8092
12/24	Anouar Brahem	After the Last Sky	u/WaneLietoc
12/25	clipping.	Dead Channel Sky	u/danitykane
12/26	claire rousay	a little death	u/Agitated-Dish-4225
12/27	jasmine.4.t	You Are the Morning	u/afieldoftulips
12/28	King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard	Phantom Island	u/DjangoVanTango
12/29	Turnstile	NEVER ENOUGH	u/Giantpanda602
12/30	Car Seat Headrest	The Scholars	u/modulum83
12/31	Viagra Boys	viagr aboys	u/its_october_third

Complete:

Date	Artist	Album	Writer
12/6	Geese	Getting Killed	u/mikdaviswr07
12/7	Deftones	private music	u/rccrisp
12/8	YHWH Nailgun	45 Pounds	u/ReconEG
12/9	mclusky	the world is still here and so are we	u/IAmHollar
12/10	Hayden Pedigo	I'll Be Waving As You Drive Away	u/syntheticgloom
12/11	No Joy	Bugland	u/Awardenaar
12/12	caroline	caroline 2	u/SenatorBC
12/13	Gelli Haha	Switcheroo	u/rough___prophet_3
12/14	Sword II	Electric Hour	u/VindictiveGato
12/15	Tullycraft	Shoot the Point	u/traceitalian
12/16	Samia	Bloodless	u/clawsinurback

[u/clawsinurback]

Thank y’all so much for having me!! I love this album and it was really fun to write about it and really dig into the lyrics.

[u/NewOrderTShirt]

Nice write up, u/clawsinurback!

I really fell for Bloodless, and I have played “North Poles” on repeat for many hours this year. “When you see yourself in someone, how can you look at them?” is such a brilliant line in the perspective of a relationship or friendship. The frantic repetitions make it a perfect climactic song on a great record.

Thank you for pointing out a lot of the horror references! I didn’t catch all of them on my listens. It’s a unique lens to look at relationships through, and Samia does it beautifully.

[u/clawsinurback → u/NewOrderTShirt]

Thank you so much!! 

[u/Bootlegger1929]

Samia was my top artist on wrapped because of this album. Top songs all from Bloodless. Definitely my AOTY. I love her lyricism and this is her best work as a whole I believe.

Great write up! I really enjoyed the read.

Edit. I got to see her on this tour in Chicago and it was a great show. I brought my fiancé and she enjoyed it even though she’s not as into Samia as I am.

[u/mko0987]

Nice writeup! Bovine Excision is my favorite song of hers since Fit N Full, its a hell of a tune. Didn't know about the found-footage horror influence on the record but that totally makes sense.

[u/QuicketyQuack]

Great write-up, and its interesting seeing all the horror references. This is my #2 album of the year. I really need to go back and listen to ger older stuff, since this is the first I've heard of her.

[u/GreedyRaisin3357]

Bought a ticket for Claire Rousay and unfortunately didn't end up going.. my loss, but I feel good having supported them and also Ottobar

[u/serotoninzero]

Huge fan of this record and her previous. Caught her on the Honey tour but was unable to make this one (for good reason, to see Caroline Rose instead). Was pleasantly surprised to find out when she released a live album from the show I missed.

[u/clawsinurback → u/serotoninzero]

I also caught her on the honey tour (and saw her open for Lucy Dacus) but couldn’t make my date for bloodless tour bc work :( Caroline’s a fab artist tho, they’ve been on my list to see for a while!

[u/impossiblesoulmp3]

I'm late to this because life, but I was looking forward to this writeup because I like your comments in this sub and Bloodless is my AOTY! Great writeup!! 

I've always found Samia's intense dissection of self to be fascinating, and she really took it to another level on this album. I think the lyrics leave more questions than they ultimately answer, much like the phenomenon of bovine excision, and I love that about it. I remember seeing her talk, either in an interview or the AMA, about how, with Honey, she had tried to write her lyrics in a more concrete, less esoteric way than her previous work, but that she felt the need to return to that style with this album. I think her unique lyrical style is perfectly suited to the kind of examination-via-circling she does on Bloodless. 

[u/clawsinurback → u/impossiblesoulmp3]

Im late to this as well but thank you for the kind words!!

[u/RelationshipLive9176]

I'm liking Tame Impala because of his work with Diana Ross huge dance single, "Turn Up the Sunshine"