Orville Peck

It’d be no small understatement to call this year an artistic renaissance for Orville Peck, the trailblazing country performer who has spent the last 11 months soaring to new creative heights. After 2024’s beloved collaboration album, Stampede-which featured such icons as Willie Nelson, Kylie Minogue, Elton John, and more-the masked singer took on an entirely new challenge: Broadway. In his mesmerizing, layered debut as the Emcee in Cabaret, Peck won legions of new fans and critical acclaim in kind during his 128-show run in the celebrated production. Uprooting his life from California to New York City for nearly half a year, the Pony and Bronco singer-songwriter found newfound musical, lyrical inspiration wherever he turned. “I was trying to challenge myself with being more vulnerable with songwriting, and I think that experience felt so insanely vulnerable for me,” he says of the doors Cabaret unlocked. “Obviously I was performing without my mask, which was so new for me, but the nature of the material being so heavy-with me going in really wanting to do a good job-pushed me to even more new levels of vulnerability.” Somehow, between rehearsals, performances, and martial arts training for a starring role in a late summer movie shoot (Street Fighter, due out in 2026), he kept finding his mind returning to music. So he did what he always does: he started writing, and linked with Unknown Mortal Orchestra’s Jacob Portrait (Alex G, Porches, Lil Yachty, and more) to start crafting the songs that would eventually make up Appaloosa. The seven-song EP reunites Peck with longtime collaborator Noah Cyrus on “Atchafalaya;” pays tribute to his Cabaret stint with a cover of the Sally Bowles’ number “Maybe This Time;’ and plumbs new emotional ground with “Oh My Days”-which the artist calls his “first-ever love song, considering that I always write about heartbreak, not love.” “I always tend to sing and write about what’s going on in my life, and that felt like a natural, big part of my life that’s evolved since Bronco-which was very much about coming out of a relationship,” Peck says. “This is the first batch of songs that are about the start of this new relationship, and the fears and doubts and insecurities that come with new feelings for someone, especially after coming out of such a tumultuous time in the Bronco world. These songs are about a time when I felt very nervous about being heartbroken again, and what it meant to fall in love again for the first time in a long time.” Peck recorded Appaloosa in Brooklyn during rare free windows in his calendar. Its title, he says, felt like slipping on a glove. “An appaloosa is a famously spotted horse, and in some ways, to me that represents a singularity-a uniqueness,” he says. “In my mind, I picture a bunch of different horses all standing around, all different breeds, but you would notice the appaloosa standing out because their coat is so distinct and so unique. These last few years, since Bronco, a big ...