Sig Wilder is an American singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who lives in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Aotearoa. The leader of the Sig Wilder & Friends band, his songcraft—melancholic, existential and introspective—feels like a well-worn handwritten journal of lived experiences rendered through metaphor, poetic prose, and the stylistic conventions of folk, alt-country, ambient and late-night heartbreak radio. Written and recorded over the last five years, Sig Wilder & Friends’ debut album, Cowboy Practice, draws from Sig’s memories of growing up within the gently rolling plains and hills of the American Midwest, younger years spent chasing musical success in Austin, Texas, and sinking into listless ennui in Melbourne, before coming into his own across the Tasman. Expressed through a slow-cooked melange of bluesy slide guitar, harmonica, vocal harmonies and a rolling rhythm section, Cowboy Practice reveals Sig as a patient songwriter who lets the words and melodies on the tip of his tongue bloom in their own time. “Cowboy Practice is about becoming content with who I am,” he says. “That’s how it started, and I am in no way finished on that journey. But I’m happy with the cowboy that I’ve become, regardless of any notions of how one “should” be a cowboy.”