Keepsake of the Week: “Who Hurt You?” by Jensen McRae

“Who Hurt You?” is the first EP from alternative folk songwriter Jensen McRae and is this week’s #KOTW.

In this semi-weekly blog series, we post our favorite new or re-discovered releases in independent music, our Keepsake of the Week, or #KOTW.

Pardon the pun, but Jensen McRae is really starting to get to me. I am somewhat known for my indie, fangirl, unironic obsessions, and luckily, I don’t believe in being able to love something too much. I discovered McRae the way many others did, when her viral tweet turned into my summer vaccination anthem, “Immune.” I wasn’t living in Los Angeles to be able to hear her on the local SoFar Sounds circuit there, but Fresh Finds playlists and McRae’s collaboration with Joy Oladokun caught my attention. I then became so addicted to her alto voice and brave storytelling that, like any good “stan,” I set a Google alert so that I would be the first to know when McRae finally released her promised debut EP. “Who Hurt You?” came into the world within a few months of my discovering McRae, and boy, did it hit me where it hurts.

The EP, short but most definitely not sweet, is unstable and inconsistent. Weren’t you at age 23? It starts with “Starting To Get To You,” the record’s catchiest track that sounds best in car speakers while driving through the Valley. This is McRae at peak confidence and in full control, singing, “Na-na-na-na-na I know you’re scared / But you la-la-loved me for a second there / Look at what a heart can do / I’m starting to get to you.” On first listen, the song stands in stark contrast to the rest of the album, in which McRae’s cries come in varying degrees of a shared pain. After a few listens, though, it’s easy to see how the track fits the project and McRae herself: it is her confidence that society attacks.

Like many women in their twenties, McRae has learned the hard way to keep her head down, her voice quiet. Her strongest song, “Wolves,” comes second, and it is a hard one for me to write about. I too have visited the woods; I too have known the wolves.

McRae has a stunning music video for “Wolves,” but I recommend watching her live acoustic performance of the song. Then read the comments. It’s important.

What is so powerful about McRae, beyond her rather undeniable vocal range, is how she conveys intense emotions between breaths, pauses, and breaks. To spoil it for you, “Wolves” is about sexual assault. Each verse tells a different story, one from the age of 15 in a parking garage, the second at age 19 at a college party, and the third a warning to another woman. In each setting, there are wolves in the woods that McRae is learning to avoid, but doing so comes with prices of silence and anger and cold. McRae’s voice cracks and I can never seem to breathe when she sings, “I almost let him get his claws in / Still knocks the wind right out of me.” 

McRae regains a small sense of her lost power by whispering to other women in “Wolves,” but she has nary a whisper to give in the EP’s other standout, “White Boy.” She has called this her hardest song to play live, thanks to the hypnotically steady guitar and the low register in which she sings it, but McRae admits that it is also her most defining. A Black folk musician with the long-hair-wide-eyed style of Joni Mitchell, McRae occupies a space that actively ignores her. “White girl arrives / I turn invisible,” she sings here, “I don’t like who I am to you / White boy.” 

Contrary to what other reviewers have written, I don’t think this EP is defined by its anxiety. Much like McRae defining herself with “White Boy,” a song in which a Black girl chooses to no longer sing to her oppressor, this album defines itself in its title. It isn’t about anxiety; it is about asking who gave you your anxiety. It is explorative, but it is purposeful as well. Jensen McRae’s music—beginning with this EP and I hope not ending anytime soon—will hit you where it hurts. As McRae so aptly points out, you won’t feel anything otherwise.

Stream “Who Hurt You?” everywhere now.

Jensen McRae. Photo by Caity Krone.