Riley Pearce Releases New Album ‘The Weight Of Our Dreaming’

Australian indie-folk storyteller Riley Pearce has always written from a place of quiet honesty. On his new album The Weight Of Our Dreaming, he turns that lens inward – reflecting on the shifting balance between passion and responsibility, the dreams we chase, and the lives we build around them. Out today via Nettwerk, his third album arrives alongside new single “Headstone”, a meditation on the strange, stubborn pull of purpose.

Written in the wake of burnout and self-doubt, The Weight of Our Dreaming finds Riley at his most vulnerable and self-assured – confronting the cost of creative pursuit while rediscovering its joy. “This album is about the feeling of everything slipping away, the weight of greater responsibilities, and the higher stakes,” Riley shares. “But it also celebrates a newfound passion and an unshakable faith that this dream is a beautiful and essential part of my life.”

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THE WEIGHT OF OUR DREAMING
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Produced with longtime collaborator Andy Lawson, the record trades traditional percussion for textured atmospherics – layers of vocal harmonies, guitar, and found sounds that build an intimate, lived-in sonic world. Grammy Award-winner Lucky Oceans lends his unmistakable pedal steel, and Scottish artist Rosie H. Sullivan features on the bittersweet duet “Funeral”.

Across twelve tracks, Riley navigates the tension between art and life with a rare balance of grit and grace. On “Like A River”, he explores the mental toll of life in the music industry and “Bend” peers into the darker corners of comparison and self-worth, while “Good To Me Now” finds solace in small, grounding moments of family life. The tender “You Won’t Be There” lingers on the ache of distance – written for the family he leaves behind when the road calls.

Nowhere is that push-and-pull more present than on “Headstone”, where Riley wrestles with what it means to dedicate your life to something that can so easily take from you. “I honestly find it still quite strange that I’m a musician,” he admits. “I can’t really read music all that well, I’d call myself an average guitarist and singer, and I’m the least rock and roll person I know. But somehow I’ve ended up in music and these songs just keep pouring out. There’s something so therapeutic and so connected-to-life about music that keeps drawing me in. In the grand scheme of things, I know it’s what I’m meant to be doing.”

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That quiet faith runs through the heart of The Weight of Our Dreaming. Even as it looks unflinchingly at burnout, disillusionment, and shifting identity, the album never loses sight of gratitude – the strange beauty in getting to live the dream at all. Becoming a father for the second time during the writing process brought that clarity home. “The birth of my second daughter was the breather I needed to put everything into perspective,” Riley says. “It helped me realise where my priorities lie.”

The Weight of Our Dreaming is both an honest reflection and a map forward – a love letter to the very thing that almost broke him, and a reminder that sometimes chasing a dream isn’t about holding on tighter, but instead about making space for what matters most.

THE WEIGHT OF OUR DREAMING TRACKLIST:Like A River
Foundation
You Won’t Be There
Magnets
Good To Me Now
Bend
Left Side View
Empty
Pretend Ferrari
Funeral (ft. Rosie H. Sullivan)
Number Called
Headstone