On the deluxe version of their 2024 album Staring at the Sun, out on February 27th, Jade Ireland Long (piano, vocals) and Jess Thompson (guitar, vocals) pull back the curtain on the early years of the singular creative partnership that is the Athens-based band Hotel Fiction. Crystallizing the first phase of their music as they prepare to move into the next, their musical telepathy is on full display on the release. Across 14 tracksincluding four new songs, which they dipped into their archives to findthe album ranges from nostalgic rock to intimate indie folk. The music has a theatrical bent in its ease of storytelling; Ireland and Thompson are troubadours traversing a range of sounds and stories as they relay the struggles of seeing friends move away, relationships, dopamine addictions, and heartbreak, while staying grounded by nature, which evokes a connection to something deeper, to something ancestral. Its fitting that Staring At The Sun harkens b