Siri Undlin, the singer-songwriter who performs as Humbird, spent 2023 fitting 100 days of touring into a single year. By New Year's Eve, between 2023 and 2024, she was having multiple panic attacks a day and waves of nausea, upstairs at her parents' house while her family celebrated downstairs. That night became the song "12 Month Ringer," and it sits at the center of her new album, Morning When it Comes, which MinnPost describes as equal parts awe and raw vulnerability.
The album matters to anyone who has ever pushed through overload until their body called the stop. It is a case study in what burnout looks like from the inside, and in the unglamorous fixes that actually helped: therapy, fewer shows, one home instead of two. Those are trade-offs many people face when chronic stress starts eating into recovery, which is why the story is worth more than a music write-up.
Here is the background a newcomer needs, from the album's themes to the tour schedule Undlin deliberately shrank.
Who is Humbird, and what is the new album about?
Humbird is the name Undlin uses for herself and her band of the same name. On Morning When it Comes, she sings about constellations, sunsets and blood moons, references the poet Mary Oliver, and reflects on political and social contexts of the world. Per MinnPost, she also offers an unflinching look at her own experience of illness, turning physical and psychological suffering into grooving beats and catchy melodies.
She calls her songs secular hymns. Though she left the church long ago — she describes herself as a former PK, or Preacher's Kid — she still values how music can create experiences in performers and audiences that feel ineffable or transcendent. Her work is not tied to any particular dogma.
What happened on that New Year's Eve?
The song "12 Month Ringer" documents a particularly acute episode that prompted major life changes. Undlin was upstairs at her parents' house, hearing the party below. "They were singing all these New Year's Eve songs," she told MinnPost. "Madonna was blasting. It was a full-on party, and they were having so much fun."
She could not join in. She was having multiple panic attacks a day and experiencing waves of nausea. "I was very sick, mentally and physically that month," she said. "I wrote that song because I literally couldn't do anything else."
The chorus channels a self-deprecating voice: "Doin' my best, badly" and "Gave it my all, sadly." Undlin said she was trying to capture someone trying to make themselves feel marginally better. Musically, the song has an upbeat rhythm, almost like country music — what she calls "a fun redemption for a very dark moment."
"You get to take these moments from your life and sculpt them," she told MinnPost. She and her collaborators wanted the album to make them smile a little. "It doesn't take away from the seriousness of a mental health crisis, but it does kind of add a little levity to it," she said.
What changed after the crisis?
Undlin made three concrete changes.
- She dialed back touring. The fall tour behind the new album is somewhat smaller in scale than past runs, in part because she is prioritizing her own well being. It includes shows in Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana, with a Nov. 13 stop at the Fine Line in downtown Minneapolis featuring opening band Bad Posture Club.
- She started therapy. Alongside cutting the schedule, Undlin began seeing a therapist.
- She picked one home base. In 2023 she was splitting time between La Crosse, Wisconsin, and Minneapolis. "I was so ungrounded," she recalled. She first tried a hybrid arrangement, then moved to Eau Claire full time. "That didn't work for me," she said of living in both places. Her family and bandmates remain in Minneapolis, and she visits often, but she is not trying to be active in both communities day to day.
That last point deserves attention. Undlin had been making records in Eau Claire for about a decade, so the move was not a leap into the unknown. "I get to collaborate with lots of people that I live down the road from," she said, adding that the city "punches way above its weight as far as the arts go." In her telling, stability came from cutting commitments, not adding coping hacks on top of an overloaded schedule. We covered a connected angle in Chronic Stress Blunts Training Adaptation — Here's How to Train Through It. Readers following this should also see Chronic Stress Blunts Training Adaptation — Here's How to Train Through It.
Why all the stars and nature imagery?
Undlin enjoys being out in the woods, and it shows in the lyrics. Many songs on the album meditate on nature and the stars. In "Hey Big Dipper," she uses stars as metaphors for living. "The Big Dipper is a very grounding constellation," she told MinnPost. "If I got eyes on that Big Dipper, I know which way is north, and I can find other things from that constellation."
In "Daughter of Empire," she references Mary Oliver, inserting a phrase from the poet's "The Summer Day" into her own lyric: "Sun sets like a dull knife / On my wild and precious life." The verse contrasts the demands of economic survival with the desire to live more consciously, including a sense of responsibility toward the environment.
That grounding instinct runs through the title track too. In her late teens, Undlin learned the word agnostic, and in "Morning When it Comes" she sings about it directly: "I left the pew / But I still pray." Later in the song she lists living creatures, from the "winged things" to the "claws and the burs," wishing "Glory be" to each. She often sings the song to herself, adding to the list. "I don't think that songs are finished when they're recorded," she said. "You can always keep working on them."
What can readers take from this?
The honest takeaway is narrow, because one artist's account is one artist's account. What the reporting establishes is what Undlin did, not what will work for anyone else. Still, the shape of her recovery is familiar: she noticed the warning signs — panic attacks, nausea, feeling "so ungrounded" — and treated them as information about her schedule rather than as a personal failing. She cut commitments, got professional support, and built a more stable daily life.
For readers balancing training, work and everything else, the parallel is worth naming. Recovery is not only what you do after a hard session; it is also how you structure the weeks around it. Our recovery coverage covers the training side of that equation. Undlin's line about sculpting dark moments into songs is a good reminder that the goal is not to erase hard periods but to work with them. Readers following this should also see Why Group Exercise Keeps People Coming Back — What the Research Shows. We covered a connected angle in Why Group Exercise Keeps People Coming Back — What the Research Shows.
Morning When it Comes is the newest album from Humbird. The fall tour continues through Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana, with the Nov. 13 Fine Line show as its second stop.
