Humboldt Street

Humboldt Street is an 8 track search for myself, mostly in the wrong places. I’ve lived on Humboldt Street since I moved from rural Virginia to Bremen, Germany in 2019. Searching for home in other people, in other cultures, in habits that didn’t fulfill me, taught me that home is not found by trying harder or reaching farther but by softly turning within.

This album is a musical deep dive into the most formative relationships, rock bottoms, and self-reconciliations of my life on Humboldt Street. And the realization that I’m all I’ve ever needed.

Listen Now

Watch

bio

Ellen Atwood is a musician and indie-pop artist freshly based in Troy, NY. With a background in classical piano and voice, she turned to songwriting during the pandemic as a way to reconnect with herself and find truth. Her singer-songwriting career started taking shape while living in northern Germany, where she released two studio albums David (2021) and Humboldt Street (2023) and performed at venues and festivals throughout Bremen and Lower Saxony including Überseefestival, Open Space Domshof, and SummerSounds. In the fall of 2024, she was chosen as one of ten songwriters to attend the INK24 Songwriters Retreat in Upstate New York.

Her songwriting has been described as “minimalist portraits that capture the soul of their subject with half as many lines as should be possible,” carried by understated yet resonant vocals. Musically, she shifts between raw, acoustic piano ballads and driving, electric guitar pop, drawing influences from artists like The Tallest Man on Earth, Death Cab for Cutie, and Lucy Dacus. Her songs lean into melancholy but always leave room for the light.