Even on a first listen, Helena Deland builds an emotive landscape you’ll get lost in. Her 2106 release, Drawing Room, is only 4 songs long, but leaves you feeling sold, satisfied, and immersed in that primitive resonance only a rare breed of music can drown you in.

She’s not looking to grab your attention with hooks and polish, she gets it just fine with unpredictable, lush, striking, and deceptively simple songwriting. The ache in the songs, that draws you in, is fused with something altogether original — Deland has a way of slowing down and fusing elements of psych-rock with the finesses and relatability of folk music.

Toronto Star went ahead and called her “your new favourite thing.” In that article, she describes her music thusly, “Songs for me are the materialization of otherwise vague ideas, a way to set specific times and places. They often become a sort of alternative way of expressing things to the people they are addressed to. Performing is the nearest I get to time travelling.”

Her voice begs for your attention and gets it; it seals the deal on her being the real deal. She’s playing tonight at the Rocket Room — a perfect sit down venue in which to really immerse yourself in her songs as they were meant to be heard.

She’s sharing the stage with Canadian cult hero Jim Bryson, and Newfoundland’s newest literary sensation Eva Crocker, who’s getting great reviews nationwide, for her big debut Barrelling Forward.

Here’s one of her more mellow moments, a song called “Baby,” about the feeling a secret attraction evokes in us.