Kevin Bronson on October 26th, 2017

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Sofia Wolfson released her first album, “Hunker Down,” when she was 15, an old soul with a cherub’s voice who wrote songs like “Older and Changing” when many her age would be obsessing over the perfect selfie. Since then, she’s gigged in every singer-songwriter-friendly room  in Los Angeles (often with some of L.A.’s other beyond-their-years teens), completed high school and gone off to the other coast to start college. Now 18, she’ll release her new EP “Side Effects” on Nov. 3.

Wolfson’s folk-pop draws from sturdy foundations — she counts Joni Mitchell, Blake Mills, the Band, Wilco, Lucinda Williams and Fiona Apple as influences — and in advance of the EP she has released the single “Snake Eyes,” an alluring piano-driven track that, like the rest of the EP, was produced by Marshall Vore, who has worked with Phoebe Bridgers. “‘Snake Eyes’ for a while at my shows was a folky, upbeat, swinging song that turned more smooth, piano-driven and funky in the studio,” Wolfson says. “I think the production itself combines a lot of my favorite styles, exploring instrumentation more than I have in the past while really highlighting the lyrics themselves.”

The piano on “Snake Eyes” comes courtesy of Lee Pardini of Dawes, one of several L.A. luminaries who gave Wolfson and Vore an assist on the EP. The songwriter also credits Jason Boesel, Dylan Day, Jay Rudolph, Jon Joseph, Mason Stoops, David Labrel and Charlie Hickey for their contributions. The EP’s title, Wolfson explains, comes from a lyric in the song “Capsule.” “I thought the idea of side effects was a through line throughout the EP,” she says, adding the the three songs deal with “some sort of trauma or experience I’ve had and the steps I took to attempt to cope. Not necessarily ‘side effects’ in the literal sense, but more the idea of wanting to be in control of your emotions and the inevitability of pain.”

||| Stream: “Snake Eyes”