Kevin Bronson on August 11th, 2015

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The soaring, dreamy pop of Trevor James Tillery is imbued with the yearning for a sense of place, and not merely geographical locale. The L.A.-based songwriter was born in Indianapolis and reared in Phoenix, later changing his address to Seattle and Nashville while exploring the many incarnations of his music. At age 25, Tillery came out as gay, a deeply liberating experience, and having made L.A. his home base since last summer, he is ready to unveil his debut EP, “In Moonlight.” Recorded in Nashville with Joshua D. Niles, “In Moonlight” finds Tillery grappling with identity and loss, and finding catharsis in the lush synth-and-guitar arrangements that frame his youthful tenor. The first single “Out of Time” is a meditation on mortality that Tillery wrote “during a pretty dark patch for myself and my family,” he says. “I had three people I care about deeply dealing with serious health issues — two of them fighting cancer. I was thinking a lot about the frailty of life and how quickly things can take a turn. … One of the first lines in the song, ‘Life is a wild fickle wind,’ is something I think about a lot.” Nothing like a shimmering indie-pop anthem to provide some shelter from the storm.

||| Stream: “Out of Time”