Nashville-based musician, Laura Mustard, is more at home in the woods or a dog park than in a bar or club. She’s like your awkward sister who loves talking about feelings and wants to help you live your best life under the trees. This deep introspection was cultivated by Laura’s unique upbringing. Her childhood was filled with hospital visits and medical routines at home. These experiences make body positivity and self-acceptance a vital focus in both Laura’s life and her music. She grew up making up stories in her head as a way to distract from her day-to-day medical care and that easily turned into writing songs in high school. Laura grew up in Fairfield, Connecticut and played classical piano and percussion. Sara Bareilles’ piano-pop was the gateway she needed to turn her classical piano background into writing and covering pop/rock songs on her own keyboard in her bedroom. Other influences include Motown/Soul artists, such as Sam Cooke, and Marvin Gaye and the positivity pop of Jason Mraz. Lately, she has developed a love of the banjo, and has devoured songs by Greensky Bluegrass, Railroad Earth, and Abigail Washburn. This rich background of influences has helped Laura develop her upbeat pop-folk sound. 

When she moved to Massachusetts for graduate school, Laura found kindred spirits in the musicians that she met at the now-Infamous Yellow Sofa Open Mic. This community of musicians led to her joining the jam band Stillbridge as their piano player, and the classic-rock band, The SilverTone5, as their drummer. Through these bands, she played all over the Connecticut and Western Massachusetts music scenes. Laura also recognized this feeling of community with other songwriters when she visited Nashville for the first time in 2013. She made the move in 2015 in order to be a permanent part of Nashville's songwriting community and has since had “cuts” co-writing songs with other artists, including Jay Rin and Sabine. 

Releasing her debut EP, Ramble On, in 2016, she worked with producer Ben Bishop, who she first met back at Uconn in 2008. Continuing to work with Bishop, she released her sophomore project, Treehouse in 2020. This release featured a professionally produced music video that was filmed in a real treehouse and told a time traveling love story. Notable press for this project includes an interview in the major publication Tricycle Magazine and a feature on the Explicitly Sick Podcast, where Laura talked in depth about multiple operations to receive a suprapubic catheter that occurred during the release cycle of Treehouse - and how this influenced her music and perspective. Laura followed this up with her first full album release in 2022 called Typewriter, a concept album on technology that was born out of a period of reflection on technology, her body and self acceptance during the pandemic in 2020. She followed this up with her Dirty Minds & Wild Hearts EP, a retrospective collection of songs about dating with chronic illness. 

For her latest release, Laura worked with Nashville producer Nolan Sorsby to create “Afraid of the Dark” - a vulnerable yet poppy song about her experience being carjacked in 2016 off of Music Row. Laura shares, “being carjacked at gunpoint really changed my sense of trust in the world and how I navigate through it. There is a very clear ‘before’ and ‘after’”. This new single dives into living in the “after” and making peace (or at least co-existing) with PTSD. The uptempo folk/pop groove featuring fiddles and horns was created intentionally to present the subject matter in a more digestible way, and also because it mirrors the “brave face” one can put on around such an intense experience. Mustard also shares how grateful she is to songwriting for helping her process life's toughest moments and to create art that others may also find comfort in.  This song will be available on all streaming platforms on October 15, 2025 - exactly 9 years to the day that Laura became “Afraid of the Dark”.