iSound

"It's like being intimate with total strangers." That is how Rachel Stolte of Great Northern describes the feeling of performing live and creating a connecting with her audience. The sentiment could be duly applied to the band's latest release, Remind Me Where the Light Is, on which Stolte and co-writer Solon Bixler pour so much of themselves into their highly personal lyrics and wistful melodies. On their sophomore album, Bixler and Stolte are not afraid to delve into darkness. Taking that risk helped them find beauty in sadness, the uplifting elements in the devastating. "We took a lot more risks by entering uncomfortable territory that wasn't touched on the last record," Bixler says. "We dug deeper into the unpleasant, which helped us to find the beauty." Experiencing the negative to find the positive is something Bixler and Stolte are familiar with. "Both of us had been heading in unfulfilling directions creatively," Bixler says of the...