The Star Prairie Project Turned a Pile of Unfinished Songs into One of 2025’s Most Unexpected Indie Triumphs

Some artists chase trends. The Star Prairie Project chases stories, and 2025 marked one of their most compelling chapters yet.

Helmed by Wisconsin songwriter Nolen R. Chew Jr., the project has always lived at the crossroads of Americana, indie rock, and free-form creativity, pulling in collaborators from around the world to turn rough ideas into fully realized worlds. But Little Gems, their standout release of the year, feels like something different. Not louder, not flashier, just deeply alive, threaded with the kind of curiosity, humor, and emotional honesty that makes the Star Prairie Project such a rare presence in independent music.

The album’s origin story is as unpretentious as its name: a handful of unfinished tracks Nolen pulled back off the shelf after wrapping two very different projects. But in revisiting them, with the help of longtime collaborators Rudiger and Ivy Marie, he unlocked something surprisingly cohesive. Little Gems became the kind of record you stumble into and end up staying with, where every track has its own personality, its own life lesson, its own charm. From the cheeky gender-role flip of “Down Boy” to the lovable-loser wink of “Poor Pitiful Me,” the album bounces between playful pop-rock and reflective Americana without ever losing its identity. Nearly a million combined streams later, those instincts proved right.

Yet behind the scenes, 2025 wasn’t just about looking back — it was about building forward. Nolen spent the year crafting new albums with collaborators across genres and continents, from a 12-song Americana project with Rudiger to a rock-forward record with his Portugal-based team. The Star Prairie Project is constantly moving, constantly evolving, constantly creating. And that’s exactly why Little Gems feels like such a defining release: it captures the heart of the project, the storytelling, the global collaboration, the joy of discovery, in its purest form.

As Nolen looks ahead to 2026, the mission stays the same: make music because you love making music. Forget the noise, forget the industry grind, forget the discouraging parts of being indie. The Star Prairie Project is proof that when you follow the joy of creation, the work will always find its audience.

When you picked those unfinished songs back up, what moment told you, “Oh wait, this is an album”?

Nolen: In that pile was the song ‘Poor Pitiful Me’ along with ‘I Like it My Way’, Tess, and           ‘Sunshine Skies’. I thought that was a really good start for an album. So I pretty much knew right away that it was enough to build on because when I would listen to the songs back to back, they flowed together well and seemed to fit. I think it was at that point that I commented to my wife that there were some little gems in this pile of songs.

You collaborate with musicians around the world. What’s the most surprising thing you’ve learned from working cross-continent?

Nolen: I learned that the one factor that brings us all together is music. It’s all about the music. Writing and recording music is joyful, and to collaborate and share that joy is one of the precious experiences of being human, in my opinion. We all love the music aspect of our craft and almost universally deplore the industry we work in as it relates to Indie Artists. Maybe the fortunate ones that are signed with the large labels feel differently, but nobody does that I work with, ha!

What made Rudiger and Ivy Marie the right voices for shaping the emotional core of Little Gems?

Nolen: Their voices merge and blend in a very unique and natural way. Our 2023 album ‘New Day at Dawn’ featured Rudiger and Ivy, so I knew what I could expect from them on ‘Little Gems’. They each sing their own songs, but there are a few songs where they sing together, which is a special treat for the listener because their duets are fantastic and dynamic. They can belt it out together like they do singing on ‘Poor Pitiful Me or they can blend their voices softly like they do on the acoustic version of ‘When I Look at the World’. Yes, they were the perfect voices for the ‘Little Gems’ album.

This album has playful highs and reflective lows. Which song changed the most from its first draft?

Nolen: That would have to be ‘When I Look at the World’. The first mix actually was the full version that appears at the end of the album, right before the finale ‘Without You’. The acoustic version sounded pretty much like the original demo structurally, but Rudiger added that box drum percussion, which I thought was really cool, and it was at the last minute that we decided to add Ivy, and then at first Ivy was singing backing, and we finally changed it to a full duet. But it kept its original charm throughout, and the full rock-out version and the campfire version are both great.

How do you stay creatively energized when working on multiple albums across completely different genres?

Nolen: It just comes naturally. It just wells up and overflows. When it’s working right, I don’t have to do anything but guide it. It’s called creating, and I believe it is humanity's greatest gift. I really believe that. We are creators, and we co-create in the universe. People ask what we would do with our time if we didn’t work. The answer is we would create. We would create in our own individual ways because it is joyful and natural, and yes, productive. You know what’s not natural? Two fifteen-minute breaks a day and a half hour for lunch. Charging the artists to create and then taking all the profits, that's not natural. That's gluttony. There is so much to write about by just really looking around us.

2025 seemed like a big “building year” behind the scenes. What shifted in your process during that time?

Nolen: We’ve been building since 2019. It’s just that six or seven years go by and the next thing you know we’ve built a discography a decent catalog. But I think 2025 was a building year in terms of the maturity and the depth and breadth of our body of work. The thing is, what is happening behind the scenes in 2025, all the writing and recording of albums and videos won’t be seen by the public for a year or more. What is being heard now on current playlists was written and recorded well over a year ago. It’s weird in that sense, there’s the world of current releases and the behind-the-scenes world we are creating for the future. But if you like The Star Prairie Project up til now, you will love the new material written and recorded in 2025. I think what shifted in that time was the world. We are in the midst of a metamorphosis, in a sense, and our new music reflects it. Rudiger and I just finished an album called ‘Burning Road’ and it has a certain mood about it a brooding but hopeful mood. It reflects that shift that you currently sense.

What’s the biggest lesson you wish every indie artist understood about joy, longevity, and carving your own lane?

Nolen: Concentrate on the joy of what you do despite the outward rewards. Because it is the internal joy they can’t take from you. The cream rises to the top. If it happens, it happens. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t. But if you reward yourself along the way with living in the natural buzz of creating your music, you win. Sometimes we make it too complicated. If you love making music you will never run out of songs. We’ve recorded ten albums now, and we haven’t run out of music. You have to love how that works. However, that works.