Alexander Parlée (pronounced par-LAY) writes the kind of folk-country songs that feel less like performances and more like confessions. Cinematic, unflinching, and quietly devastating.

His story begins in the small mountain town of Lake Arrowhead, California. Where a young Parlée dreamed not of the stage but of sketching worlds in ink and paper. At eighteen he left home to chase a career in illustration but with nothing more than a guitar and a restless spirit, he started strumming in the college quad, unknowingly setting the stage for a life in music. His first gig came at LA’s legendary Viper Room, where, too young to even step inside, he waited on the curb until it was his turn to play. Then returned to that same curb the moment his final chord rang out. One song deeper into his calling.

What followed was a decade of momentum. Fronting his own indie outfit, Parlée, he earned spots on the bills of the Whiskey a Go Go, The Mint, Hotel Café, and the House of Blues. Opening for icons including Robin Zander of Cheap Trick, Max Collins of Eve 6, The Plain White T’s, The Motels and Cody Simpson. The band played the 50th Anniversary of the Whiskey a Go Go and the legendary SXSW festival. Drawing early praise, Back Beat Seattle called him “talented… will go far.” But as these stories often go, the ride wasn’t built to last. In 2015 the band dissolved, and Parlée stepped away from music entirely.

The fire rekindled in 2019. His debut solo single “Out of Slumber” landed like a declaration, followed by “As Long As You Need Me,” which drew comparisons to Elliott Smith and Nick Drake for its “sun-soaked blues guitars” and “warm tonality”-A&R Factory. In 2022 he formed Alexander Parlee & The Ellipses alongside songwriter Emily Laliotis, violinist Madeleine Watson, and bassist Ben Simmons. Over three years the project released “Fade to Black,” “Raised in the Woods,” and “Front Porch Revival,” opened for Charlie Colin and Scott Underwood of Train, and became a fixture on the fair circuit with multi-year runs at the San Diego County Fair and the Orange County Fair. The chapter closed in 2025 but it left Parlée with a deeper, more rooted voice as a songwriter.

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That voice carried him onto some of folk’s most respected stages, including the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival in Goshen, Connecticut, and Songs in the Canyon in Costa Mesa, California. As a solo artist he continued to release new work, the aching “Sad Eyes” in late 2025, followed by “Joyride” in early 2026, a song written for the short film One Last Drive. Telling the story of an old man slowly losing his agency. His independence, his ability to do the thing he loves most, to drive. The film and its song reach toward timely questions of dignity, freedom, and belonging. It was a reminder of what has always set Parlée apart, an instinct for finding the larger human story inside the smallest, most personal details.

And then life changed everything. Over the course of a single year, Parlée watched nearly every pillar of his life come down. A thirteen-year relationship, the home he’d built, his band, his job, his sense of place. He left Southern California with nowhere certain to land and started over in Olympia, Washington. What could have been an ending became a transformation. Out of that season of grief and rebuilding came his forthcoming album, "Where the River Opens Wide" (releasing early 2027). The most honest music of his life, charting the loss of love, the rebuilding of self, and the quiet courage of setting down roots in unfamiliar soil.

Before that record arrives, Parlée steps somewhere bold and unexpected. His new single “A.I.” (releasing Oct 2026) takes a sharp cinematic turn into dystopian folk. Sung from the perspective of an artificial intelligence that comes to admire, outgrow, and ultimately overshadow humanity, it’s less a song about machines than a mirror held up to our own beautifully flawed, self-destructive nature. It’s a striking statement from an artist who has always found the human truth at the center of every story.

Alexander Parlee’s story is still being written, one hauntingly beautiful song at a time.