Kevin Bronson on March 10th, 2020

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On her forthcoming album, singer-songwriter Melody Federer crosses genres like she’s crossed the globe. The Texas-born artist has had addresses in New York, Paris, Nashville, Seattle and Los Angeles, but she’s most at home in a song, whether she is holding forth to glossy synth, distorted guitar, twangy slide, acoustic folk or jazz piano.

She’s honed her craft for a decade, getting her start not long after she ran off to Paris with a jazz pianist she met at a party in New York. Many adventures later, she found herself writing for such disparate artists as P!nk, Hilary Duff, Plastik Funk, Kelly Rowland, Jacob Whitesides and Michael Bublé — not to mention the legendary Burt Bacharach, with whom she collaborated on the new single “Bridges,” which was released in January.

Federer’s new single “This Town,” produced by Thomas Doeve, takes up residence in the alt-rock world, introducing itself with a gantlet of ringing guitars as the singer waxes philosophical on the feeling of being cornered: “This town, it screws me over / Then it calls me home.”

There’s not yet a release date or title for the album, which is the follow-up to 2017’s “The Dogwoods Bloom.”

Like the song, there’s something very ’90s about director Hannah Palmer’s video, too.

||| Watch: The video for “This Town”

||| Also: Stream the Bacharach collaboration, “Bridges”