Billy Stuart Navigates Loss, Change, and the Fear of Letting Go on Debut EP ‘Sink With Me’

Sacramento-based singer-songwriter Billy Stuart steps into a deeply personal new chapter with Sink With Me, a five-track debut solo EP. Written across several years and recorded at Uprise Recording in Sacramento, the project marks a significant departure from Billy Stuart’s years in Northern California’s hardcore punk and doom metal scenes, replacing distortion with intimate acoustic arrangements while preserving the emotional intensity of that heavier past.

The EP opens with “Downtrend,” immediately establishing its recurring themes of instability and emotional collapse. Billy Stuart writes from the aftermath of being hurt, caught between anger, unanswered questions, and the instinct to keep holding onto memories and plans that have already begun falling apart.

“The Open Door” shifts toward escape, but Billy Stuart refuses to portray leaving as an easy victory. Breaking free from something damaging introduces another problem: the terrifying uncertainty of what comes next. The instrumental “Reprieve” follows as a deliberately placed moment of breathing room, allowing acoustic and electric guitar, bass, and piano to carry the emotion before the record moves forward.

“Swan Dive” turns toward time, distance, and acceptance. Memories and attempts to preserve a fading connection gradually give way to the realization that continuing to hold on cannot repair what has already changed.

By the closing title track, the perspective becomes even more complicated. “Sink With Me” finds Billy Stuart recognizing how personal struggles can begin affecting someone else. Built around imagery of increasingly fragile ground, the song transforms pushing someone away into an act of protection rather than rejection.

Billy Stuart performs vocals, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, and piano throughout the EP. Producer Michael Cox contributed drums, bass, and strings while also engineering, mixing, and mastering the project. Michael Cox tragically passed away in a car accident shortly after their final recording session, making his creative presence throughout Sink With Me an especially meaningful part of the record’s history.

Across five tracks, Sink With Me never forces its way toward a clean resolution. Instead, Billy Stuart captures the uncomfortable space between holding on and letting go, where change may be necessary but knowing that does not make taking the next step any easier.

Your musical background is rooted in hardcore punk and doom metal. How did those heavier influences shape the emotional intensity and songwriting on Sink With Me, even as the sound became more intimate and acoustic?

I have always had a side of me that loves acoustic music as well as hardcore punk and metal. I grew up listening to those genres while also listening to artists like Rocky Votolato, Dashboard Confessional, and Elliott Smith. Even punk artists I was listening to at the time, like AFI and Love Equals Death, would have softer arrangements sprinkled throughout their albums.

I think a lot of the influence of these heavier and more aggressive genres comes out in the lyrics rather than the music. These genres always gravitate toward heavier emotional themes in their songs, and I think the songs I wrote for this EP fall in line with that as well.

The songs on Sink With Me were written across very different periods of your life, with some musical ideas dating back more than a decade. What made you realize these five tracks belonged together as one project?

I wrote the music to "Swan Dive" in 2007, "Reprieve" in 2009, and "The Open Door" in 2010; however, I did not have any lyrics for any of these songs until 2025. When I was in my hardcore punk band Strike To Survive, I was already interested in writing acoustic songs, but they didn't fit the overall vibe of what we were playing at the time, so I just held onto them.

I wrote some other acoustic arrangements as well over the years, but these three really stuck with me, and I always found myself coming back to them. I still didn't have much of an idea for what I wanted to do with them until I wrote the music for "Downtrend" and "Sink With Me", which was originally only one song, and I was having difficulty writing it until I split it into two separate songs.

Then they both started to flow. I realized these five tracks belong together when I started to write the lyrics for the four songs, with "Reprieve" being the instrumental, and found that there were cohesive themes starting to form.  

There’s a recurring sense of falling, sinking, breaking, and stepping into the unknown throughout the EP. When did you begin to recognize those images as a thread connecting the record?

When I started to write the lyrics to these four songs, I treated each song as a snapshot of the lowest moments in my life and wanted to write about how each of these moments made me feel. At these low points and times of uncertainty, I always feel like there is an emotional weight that latches onto me.

This weight has this feeling of pulling me down, and I can either try to fight it to stay above water or feel the weight is too much to carry and let it pull me down further. I didn't realize these were recurring themes in my lyrics until I started to write them down and began to notice how frequent they were.

I generally have always been one to internalize my emotions, and I feel like finally getting these lyrics out on paper and into these songs had this cathartic release that helped me work through these emotions better and took a lot of that weight off of me.

Michael Cox played a major creative role in bringing Sink With Me to life. Looking back on your sessions together, what did Michael bring out of you as an artist that you might not have discovered on your own?

If it wasn't for Michael, I don't know if I ever would have released Sink With Me. I was incredibly nervous to do this solo project. With my other previous bands, I only ever played the guitar, so I would just have to worry about that one thing. I would write a lot of the songs, play the guitar on them, and then we would record. After I was done recording my guitar parts, I didn't have to worry about any other part of the project. With this release, I would be playing the acoustic guitar, electric guitar, piano, and singing. I didn't have other band members to fall back on. On top of that, I also would need to really pay attention to the mixing and mastering.

I was looking around Sacramento for a place that I could record this EP, and none really popped out as the right vibe for me until I found Michael and Uprise Recording. We talked a bit through email at first, but once we talked on the phone, I knew he was the right guy to help with this project. He had this positivity in his voice and really seemed like he was excited to record this with me. We had four four-hour sessions together, and it was just him and me working away on this.

He added drums, bass, and strings to really make this EP shine and gave me the confidence to sing for the first time in my music career in a booth in front of him. He showed this recording just as much care and attention to detail as I did, and I don't think I could have asked for anyone better to have made my debut EP with. He holds a truly special place on this EP, and I will always carry his memory and the time we got to record together.

The title track explores the difficult idea of pushing someone away because you believe staying close will ultimately hurt them. What made “Sink With Me” feel like the right song and title to represent the EP as a whole?

I feel like the other songs on the record deal with how other people's actions affect me and my emotional struggles with them, while the song "Sink With Me" takes a look at how my emotional struggles affect others. When I have gone through these low periods, I can see how it affects the ones I care about and how they feel helpless trying to pull me out of it. There is this guilt that I feel during these times where I know I'm making them feel bad because I'm feeling bad, and my initial thought is that it would be better for them to just walk away from me.

I mentioned earlier this feeling of emotional weight pulling me down during these times, and I never want others to be pulled down and "sink with me" because of my struggles. So, while the song "Sink With Me" is more about not wanting people close to me to be dragged down by these feelings, the EP title Sink With Me is more about inviting the listener to go on this journey with me through chapters of my personal struggles and also maybe have these stories resonate with them. I want to show people that they are not alone in struggling with loss, uncertainty, guilt, and hopefully they can take some comfort in feeling understood.