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 morphed into writing songs in high school. Laura grew up in Fairfield, Connecticut and played classical piano and percussion, giving her an early love of rhythm and syncopation. Gavin DeGraw's 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, Mipso, and Abigail Washburn. The poetry of Walt Whitman and Mary Oliver is also a touchstone for Laura. This rich background of songs and influences has helped Laura develop her current 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 (along with several favorite new hiking trails around Amherst). 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 big move in 2015 in order to be a permanent part of Nashville's songwriting community. In 2020, Laura had her first “cut” with a co-written song, “Colour Will Come Back” with Country UK Artist, 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.

For her latest project, Laura worked with Nashville producer Wilson Harwood in his Elevated Music Studio to create a collection of songs that chronicles her dating experience in her 20s, with songs about first love, rejection, lust, unrequited love, self-love and the hopeful excitement of new love. Laura shares, “We’re not in the treehouse anymore” as she introduces more mature song topics and pulls back the curtain on what it’s like to date with chronic illness/a body that works differently (and the insecurity and resilience that comes from those experiences). The Dirty Minds & Wild Hearts EP is a collection of six songs with pop/folk production with a banjo, mandolin, fiddle, and a tin-can phone. Featuring  songs that lean into the genres of Americana,  Irish folk and Motown, Dirty Mind and Wild Hearts  will be available in the winterl of 2023.