“The Ache of Living” - Danielle Schroeder
Photo Credit: Artist EPK
Vancouver-based singer-songwriter Danielle Schroeder has always written from the soul, but with her first release of 2025, she’s not just baring her heart — she’s letting it bleed beautifully across the strings.
“The Ache of Living” is a quiet storm — an aching, reflective track born from the grief of losing a close friend. It is a stripped-down, soul-deep meditation on grief, motherhood, and the fragile, often unspoken edges of vulnerability.
This isn’t a song that talks about pain — it feels it, all the way down.
“What I really didn’t expect when my friend died was just how vulnerable I would feel being in such raw grief in front of my children,” Danielle shares. That honesty alone speaks volumes about what kind of artist she is — one who doesn’t flinch from the uncomfortable parts of being human. The Ache of Living doesn’t offer easy answers. It’s not trying to fix anything. It’s just sitting with the hurt, breathing through it, and letting us know we’re not alone if we’ve felt this way too.
Recorded at Monarch Studios with producer Aaron Klassen, the song sounds as if it was grown rather than recorded. You can feel the care in every sonic choice. There’s a quiet spaciousness to it — like walking through an empty field at dusk with nothing but your thoughts, and maybe the ghost of someone you loved walking beside you.
Photo Credit: Artist EPK
The guitar work — particularly that rich open-G tuning — nods to Danielle’s folk influences like Tracy Chapman and Joni Mitchell, but there’s a modern texture that slips in, subtly calling to mind artists like The War on Drugs and even the melancholy depth of Radiohead. It’s folk, but it’s also post-folk. Grown-up folk. Healing folk.
Schroeder isn’t just a songwriter — she’s also a counsellor, and that dual role shows up in the emotional intelligence of her music. There’s a rare kind of permission she gives her listener: permission to feel it all, to not have it all together, to grieve publicly and imperfectly. And that might just be the most radical thing about her art.
This is someone who understands the emotional terrain of life not just from the stage but from the living room floor, and it makes her music land like a balm. She started writing music while working with people at the end of their lives — and you can feel that sacred sense of presence and reflection in every note.
The Ache of Living is the lead single from Danielle’s upcoming EP “Later is Here”, dropping this June. If this track is any indication, the full project will be a study in emotional honesty — and likely one of the year’s most quietly devastating, deeply affirming records.
Danielle Schroeder isn’t here to entertain. She’s here to connect. To tell the truth. To help us all breathe through the tough stuff, one song at a time.
And frankly? The world needs more of that right now.
“The Ache of Living” is available now on all major streaming platforms
