James Ivy

James Ivy is the project of the New Jersey-born, New York-based singer-songwriter and producer James Butler. His debut album, The Seams — simultaneously an ode to and critique of stagnancy — sees Butler muddle through the doldrums of life, stripped of ego or dogma. Acting as a marked moment of pause and resistance, the project works to combat his early reliance on the economy of immediate artistic satisfaction. 

Entering the music scene in the age of digital immediacy in 2015 via Soundcloud, Butler became accustomed to allowing his music to reach audiences nearly as soon as they had formed. This quick-footed approach to creation continued even after Butler’s project began to explore singer-songwriter territory. The creation of his early EPs, Good Grief (2021) and Everything Perfect (2023) were Butler’s initial steps toward finding his place in music and piecing together his artistic identity. When making these projects, Butler passed his sonic output through a digital filter; the drums were sampled and layered on top of each other, the guitar was played into an audio interface and brought to life through amp simulation rather than recording analog, and Butler’s voice was heavily processed and tuned, acting almost as a synth amongst the rest of the maximalist production. 

Riding the high of his early work, Butler was brought on to support Keshi, Porter Robinson, and Anamanaguchi on their respective North American runs, and embarked on a headline tour of his own to support Everything Perfect in 2023. Butler has received praise from Pitchfork, NYLON, FLOOD, Triple J, MTV News, Coup de Main, M Le magazine du Monde, and more. 

Dedicated to nurturing his artistry as both a collaborator and producer, Butler has produced for THE BLSSM, Roy Blair, Porter Robinson and Wavedash, and partnered with Roy Blair to release their joint project, American Road In New Jersey in January 2026. 

Swapping his usual digital computer-reliant workflow for a more classic approach, Butler started all his ideas for The Seams on acoustic guitar, ruminating on these ideas for months before taking them to the studio to flesh out the full arrangements. Whereas his earlier work was defined by glossy pop production, The Seams is deliberately raw, brought to life with a purposefully restricted sonic palette consisting of guitars, live drums, strings, and an old DX7 synthesizer. What’s left after all this subtraction is not less, but more: Butler at his most vulnerable and earnest, standing front and center of this record rather than hiding behind a wall of sound.

Within The Seams, Butler finds momentum in stagnancy. The monotony of making an album over two years subconsciously comes through in songs about immobility and frustration: loitering in your own mind, being caught in a loop, and trying your hardest to achieve something predestined to fail. 

“I’m not so good at writing from the perspective of someone else, making up stories or writing abstractly,” Butler shares. “The Seams ended up being an autobiography of a very boring time in my life where I wasn’t doing a lot of living and I really had nothing to write about other than the feelings of self-doubt, guilt, fear and frustration that came from making this album. I built super high expectations in my head which created a feedback loop — negativity leading to bad, forced, uninspired music which led to more negativity. The Seams is not only a reflection of those feelings but also a testament to breaking that feedback loop and embracing human error.”