Claudia Hoyser wants people to feel seen and heard after a breakup.

The country singer-songwriter shares that sentiment while processing heartbreak on her single, “Girl in Blue.”

“There are so many people out there that are doing that every day and putting on a strong face for everyone else,” said Hoyser, who’s from Rochester, New York. “I wanted to give like a ‘Hey, hello, I see you’ to people that are feeling that way.”

Hoyser gives that sonic nod to listeners through empathetic lyrics and earnest instrumentation. Backed by atmospheric electric guitar and hopeful acoustic guitar, she sings, “Looks like a real good time / Laughing over her glass of white wine / Crazy how nobody can tell that she’s dying inside.”

“It’s saying, ‘Oh my god, I can’t even face people right now. I’m so heartbroken, I don’t want to go. I don’t want to get out there,’” Hoyser said. “But you have to put on your strong face and prove to yourself and everybody else that you can still keep going, even though what you actually feel is completely broken and alone.”

To learn more, I spoke with Hoyser about her music and background ahead of a March 14 show at Black Crystal Café in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Q: How has life been treating you?

A: 2025 has already been a whirlwind. It was on my list of goals to release new music and travel as much as possible for shows. And we’ve already accomplished that, and it’s just the end of February, so it’s going great.

Q: What’s been inspiring you from a creative standpoint lately?

A: We’re finally starting to see an uptick in women in country music. [They’re] starting to be played more on the radio, starting to have more of a presence online, and just overall in general. And the songwriting is becoming so strong, and it’s shining through on social media these days. People are starting to gravitate towards great songwriting and women in country [music], so that has been super inspiring for me. I’ve just been able to dive deeper into my songwriting and fuel the fire for 2025.

Q: How did your musical journey start in Rochester, New York?

A: I have been singing for as long as I can remember. My parents got me a karaoke machine when I was a kid. I think it came from Santa originally, but I burnt that thing into the ground and never put it down. I picked up a guitar probably around fourth grade and just started tinkering with it. My uncle was very musical and so is my dad, so they had a big influence on me growing up.

I just wanted to write little songs in my journals, and I never finished them, but I had little starts in every single booklet I could find. I started playing out in local coffee shops and some bars and restaurants around middle school. It was always a hobby for me; it was always something I found myself coming back to. I would skip sleepovers to sit in the basement and work on my four guitar chords and try to make up songs.

Q: How did that journey continue to grow after college?

A: I always thought this was going to be a hobby and a passion of mine. I went to Kent State University for college, and I studied communications, so I thought I’d graduate school and go off and get my big girl job doing advertising or marketing.

I ended up meeting a man named Tony Gross, and he became my manager and my producer for about 10 years. We’ve had an amazing ride. We had a song land in a Netflix movie early on and a song take off on country radio. It started locally and it spread to about 17 country stations. We started visiting a bunch of radio stations and just following the path, and it never slowed down, it only kept speeding up. It started when I was young, and I can’t believe I get to say that I’m still doing it to this day, but it still seems to keep getting better.

Q: What artists have inspired you along the way?

A: I’ve always been a huge Miranda Lambert fan, and honestly, when I was young, Taylor Swift was it for me. I saw her singing all those love songs, and I thought, “I’m gonna be that someday.” She came out with the song, “Fifteen,” when I was 15, so that just hit home. I thought, “OK, I have to do this.” And now I look to Kacey Musgraves, Carter Faith, and Chris Stapleton. There are just so many amazing people in country music that are constantly inspiring me.

Q: In 2017, the single, “No Matter What It Costs,” gained instant popularity on local country radio. How did that song help spark your music career?

A: We came up with “No Matter What It Costs,” [and] we thought it was pretty cool at the time. I was honestly much more singer-songwriter. I was a little nervous to say, “Hey, I’m country,” because I’m from upstate New York. I didn’t think that [would] go over too well with the country folks. But, it turns out it doesn’t matter when you’re writing about family and love and telling stories. It lends itself to country music. Plus, I love a good pedal steel.

[“No Matter What It Costs”] wasn’t even finished yet, and we sent it to a friend of ours who worked at a country radio station to see what he thought of the song. We wanted to know, “Should we finish this? Would it be worth finishing up?” And he said, “Finish it? I think it sounds great. I think this would fit on my station. I’m gonna test it out and play it a couple of times.” And we said, “Are you serious?” We were not expecting that at all. He called us back a couple of days later and said, “You’re not gonna believe this, but I got some phone calls on this song.” And we didn’t know what that meant, we didn’t understand that was a big deal.

And he said, “You don’t get it. I’m a relatively smaller local station. Nobody calls in anymore unless they’re going to win concert tickets.” People were calling and asking if it was the new Sheryl Crow record. And because of that, people calling in and making a fuss about it, he decided to add it to his regular rotation. That gave us the encouragement to start calling around and checking in with other country stations, seeing what they thought, and telling them the story—and they were loving it. It spread to about 17 stations and then we went down and participated in CRS, a big country radio seminar in Nashville.

Q: That wildfire support from country radio soon led to the release of your debut EP, Steam, in 2017. How did that record come together for you during that time?

A: We kept growing it and trying to visit as many radio stations as we could. And then as we started visiting stations, we found out that they [hoped] we’d be visiting with a CD in hand. They said, “If you’re going to come visit us, you’re gonna have to have a CD.” And we said, “What? A CD? We’ve only got a couple of songs ready to go.” We took our closest songs that were the most finished and what we thought were the [worthiest songs] of being on a record someday. We put it together on the Steam EP and launched that in 2017.

We put that out, and it was incredible. I mean, for me, someone who had always wanted to be a singer and follow my passion for music, just to hold that CD in my hands is something that I’ll never forget. Getting those in the mail and opening them up, was just an incredible feeling. And I still get that way every time we accomplish a new song or finish a new music video. I’m still just as excited as the first time.

Q: By 2021, you released your full-length album, Red Light’s Turning Green. What new insights did you gain while working on it?

A: Thinking back, I remember feeling so frustrated with how long it took. But I will never forget the a-ha moment when it was all said and done, and we finally had that full record out. I had this sense of overall peace like, “Wow, I’m so glad it took that long,” because the record that came to be was nothing like how the record started. And I’m so proud of how far it came, and each step of the way I was learning a new process and learning how to hear my voice and how I wanted the instruments to surround the story. I had my hands in there co-producing this record. And in the beginning, I had no idea what I was doing, and by the end, I felt like I had a nice grip on how we wanted it to sound.

Q: The single, “Girl in Blue,” explores a woman’s struggle to overcome heartbreak. How did your personal experiences with heartbreak inspire the song?

A: I think this was probably a bunch of bottled-up emotions I’ve had for years and years. I went through a ton of little breakups here and there throughout my life. I’m a huge lover, I’m a deep lover. At the time, I feel like you have to say, “OK, well, there goes that,” and move on. Later as I’m thinking back, as I’m sitting down and writing music, it’s like, “Maybe all these things happen for a reason so I’d have some great things to write about in my music someday.”

Q: What was it like to co-write “Girl in Blue” with guitarist Ryan Hurley?

A: This one just kind of poured out. I had a voice memo I took in my phone a few months back, and it was, “Guys love a girl in blue.” I wasn’t sure if it was going to be: “Was she wearing blue? Is she sad?” And then it just clicked. I was sitting with my guitar player Ryan Hurley … and he was messing around on the guitar. And I said, “Wait, that’s the song! That’s gonna be ‘Girl in Blue,’” and the lyrics just started flowing and it just kind of wrote itself at that point.

[Ryan] contributed lyrics as well, but he’s more of a guitar man. He knows when something sounds right or wrong, and he pushes me to keep writing deeper. He’d say, “You’re almost there, but just say what you want to say,” because I have a tendency to write around what I’m actually trying to say. I’ll come up with some lengthy metaphor instead of just saying what it is. And I struggle with that—that’s on my goal list for the year—to be more to the point and say what I’m actually feeling. And so Ryan helps me with that.

Q: You recorded “Girl in Blue” with producer Zarni Devette in Nashville. How did she help you shape the track’s overall sound?

A: I was introduced to Zarni as a writer down in Nashville. My friend Aubrey was putting together some writes for me and was trying to get me into some rooms with very talented songwriters down in Nashville. Zarni and I had a few writes, and after one of our writing sessions, we wrote a song called “Not So Bad.” She said, “Well, why don’t we just do a quick demo of this?” And I said, “OK.”

In her house, she has a home studio, and she just threw up a microphone, hit record, and threw together a little acoustic guitar track. And at the end of it, it sounded so good. I said, “Are you kidding me? It was that easy! I mean, it sounds amazing. We should do this more.” And she said, “Well, I do. I record, I produce—that’s what I do when I’m not songwriting.” We just started working on four more songs, and “Girl in Blue” was the first of four. It’s a big goal of mine this year to release as much music as I possibly can. I’ve got the next track, [“Breathing Smoke”], ready to come after this. Zarni has been an amazing help in trying to bring my creative ideas to light. Now that I feel like I have a little bit of a better handle on my sound, and after a long time developing, it’s been a lot of fun working with Zarni—she’s incredible. Ryan [Hurley] came down and recorded guitar parts and then Zarni produced the rest of it herself.

Q: The video for “Girl in Blue” features blue clothing, blue lights, and dark backdrops. How did director Justin Hammond help you develop the video’s blue-themed concept?

A: The music video brought a whole nother dimension to the story because the videographer had an idea that she was in this void. She’s going out, she’s leaving, but she’s very self-reflecting. She can’t even be there in the moment with everyone else; everything is kind of black around [her] because [she’s] in that state of mind.

I let him run with his creative direction on this one. I’m normally very hands-on, but the first time that we talked about doing a video for this song, he just lit up. He said, “I have so many ideas for this,” and I wanted to see how he could pull it together. And his vision just locked in with mine, and it’s exactly what I hoped for—but even more—so he did an amazing job bringing it to life.

Q: You’re performing a sold-out show on March 14 at Black Crystal Café in Ann Arbor. What plans do you have for your set?

A: [Black Crystal Café’s] G.W. [Staton] has been reaching out for a few years, and [he] wanted to pull a show together. And it just hadn’t worked out with timing and it happened to click this year. It will be our first time performing in Ann Arbor. We’ve been to Michigan a bunch of times near Manton and Frankfort. We’re very excited to get to Ann Arbor for the first time, and G.W. has been amazing to work with and so has Tom [Gallagher].

And it looks like we’re gonna have a full house. Ryan Hurley will be with me playing guitar, and he uses live looping to build out the atmosphere, create some amazing soundscapes, keep the beat up, and fill out the sound while we’re not with a full band that night. It’s going to be an acoustic, intimate evening. It will be a whole mix: we will do some of the crowd favorites, a few that they know, a few that they don’t, and then some brand new songs that are currently being recorded and set to release for the rest of the year.

Q: Besides music, you also have your own coffee brand, Hoyser Country Blend, and coffee whiskey brand, Hoyser Country Drunken Bean. How did you get into that line of business?

A: We started doing these videos during COVID where we put out a classic country song every Monday. We called it Hoyser Country Monday, and we included a little vintage coffee pot, the espresso Moka pot, in all the videos, and they just blew up. We had over 150 million views on the series, and I was actually able to develop my coffee brand, and now whiskey brand, because of those videos.

Q: You released your new single, “Breathing Smoke,” last week. What’s up next for you, especially regarding new material?

A: We’re getting ready to record the next batch [of songs] … [and we’re] just keeping them rolling. My dream is to have vinyl out by Christmas, so I would love to do an A-side and a B-side of these new songs and get it on vinyl. I hope to do a full record at some point, but it is helpful to put the singles out there and get a feel for what people are vibing with and then put it together as the story unfolds.

Claudia Hoyser performs on March 14 at Black Crystal Café, a private showcase in Ann Arbor, Michigan. For details, visit the venue’s website.