Odie Leigh would never have called herself a musician before the depths of the 2020 pandemic, when her rapper roomies made a bet: Whoever records a song that goes viral first, wins. Slightly ticked off that they hadn’t included her in the wager, she decided to hit them with her best shot, and Odie was crowned the victor when a track she wrote blew up on TikTok. “I was like, ‘I'm gonna show y'all. I'm gonna win,’” she recalls, laughing. “Then I woke up to a bunch of comments on TikTok being like, ‘Oh my God, release this. This is amazing!’ Now, I’m a musician.” She released her first EP, How Did It Seem to You?, in 2022, about a situationship gone wrong. After those releases began gaining steam on social media, Odie Leigh started hitting stages hard — an impressive show of hustle for someone who never really dreamed of life on the road. Nevertheless, she toured Europe, North America, and played Newport Folk in 2023; she also has festival gigs like Shaky Knees and Kilby Block Party, among others, later this year. Odie eventually achieved many an indie musician’s dream when she signed with Mom + Pop in 2023, mostly due to their diverse catalog: Yes, she’s made Americana music in the past, but she’s no one-trick pony. She craved the room to stretch and change and scream. And for Carrier Pigeon, she did just that, teaming up with a producer/musician Derek Ted — and infusing the 10-track suite with a more hard-edged sound, and plenty of fun.