Steven Wesley Guiles is a singer-songwriter based in Claremont, California, whose work spans indie rock, alt-pop, and acoustic folk — drawing comparisons to Jeff Tweedy, Elliott Smith, Maggie Rogers, and Hippo Campus. He has toured the country fronting Pushstart Wagon, Friction Bailey, and Steven and the Starlight, and built a catalog of six solo records over the past fifteen years.

For most of that catalog, he was circling something he couldn’t quite name yet.

His 2022 album Transitions was trimming the branches. I Was A Teenage Blood Sacrifice Cult Member cuts at the roots.

Recorded in his San Dimas studio and mixed by Larry Crane (Jackpot! Recording Studio, Portland — Elliott Smith, Sleater-Kinney, Death Cab for Cutie), the album was mastered for vinyl and digital release by Adam Gonsalves at Telegraph Mastering (Sufjan Stevens, Willie Nelson, Deerhoof). the album was written across one of the harder stretches of his life — divorce after 27 years of marriage, the deaths of both parents, deconstruction from evangelical Christianity, and eventually finding his way to something steadier: honest relationships, real friendship, and a love he didn’t see coming. The record holds all of it. Purity culture, fear, grief, doubt, and on the other side of all that, something that actually looks like hope.

He is also a member of Future Kings of Denmark and the instrumental outfit Lounge Lazers. His 2023 instrumental album Chester Light Guiles, a collaboration with his brother Dave, is a quieter tribute to their late father.

Steven’s songs have been featured on Amazon’s Reacher, CBS’s Blue Bloods, FOX’s The Mindy Project, and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, as well as Showtime, MTV, NBC, AMC, and NPR. His collaboration with Terrel Burt (feat. Kesha Shantrell), “Perfect Timing,” reached the top 10 of the iTunes R&B and Soul charts. Friction Bailey’s The Silent Night has over one million streams on Spotify. His Fallout tribute “Nuka Cola Love Song” surpassed three million views on TikTok and YouTube.

I Was A Teenage Blood Sacrifice Cult Member is coming this summer.