The New York City violinist and singer-songwriter Nevler packs Sequoia, Unfair, Sunshine, and Velvet with moonlit drama, bedroom closeness, and situationship fallout “A Handful Of Moons“.

Press play and the room changes size. “A Handful Of Moons“ may only run for about thirteen and a half minutes, but Nevler knows how to make a short EP feel packed with messy texts, late trains, soft light, and one too many feelings waiting outside the door.

Nevler is the artist name of Meredith Nevler Derecho, a New York City based singer-songwriter and violinist. The name carries family weight, since it honours her mother’s maiden name and her mother’s own connection to the violin. The instrument is not sitting politely in the corner.

It reacts, circles, lifts, and sometimes stares directly at the listener.

“A Handful Of Moons“ is Nevler’s first step into production, made with producer and mixing engineer Chris Peters. Peters adds guitars, synths, and mandolin, while Kevin Garcia plays drums on several tracks.

The backstory is sweet: college friends, voice memos from 2023, apartment recordings, tea, tissues, and three years of turning private chaos into a four-track EP.

The opener, “Sequoia“, is the warm hand at the start. It takes Sequoia National Park and turns it into romance with height, space, and campfire glow. The mandolin gives the bridge lift, while the violin lines rise like trees catching late sun.

Nevler asks, “Will you show me that you’ll slow your steps to stay right next to me?”, and suddenly the whole EP has its first big question: can love keep pace when life starts moving fast?

Then “Unfair” flips the table. The waltz shape gives it a strange elegance, but the hurt underneath is not dressed for dinner. It pulls from Florence and the Machine’s dramatic force, Ethel Cain’s heavy build, and Mitski’s sharp alternative instinct.

When the bridge crashes in with drums, guitars, and radiator-made dragons, it feels like the emotional version of a group chat going silent after someone finally says the true thing. The song refuses the easy payoff of a final chorus, which makes the ache hang there. Rude, but effective.

“Sunshine” brings everything down to a smaller room. Recorded largely in Nevler’s New York City bedroom, it leans into doubled vocals, sparse playing, and bits of ambient noise. The Elliott Smith influence makes sense here, especially in the rough closeness of the vocal.

The lyric, “You wouldn’t like this twin size bed, but just for me, it doesn’t feel so wrong,” lands with quiet force because it sounds like someone trying to decorate a wound with clean sheets.

“Velvet” is the final strange shimmer. Its mix of violin harmonics, distorted background vocals, and centred lead vocal gives it a mermaid-after-midnight feeling.

There is sweetness, but there is also a little saltwater weirdness. A shell phone would ring once and nobody would answer. That is the vibe.

What makes this EP click for the 2026 listener is how accurately it understands the situationship age. This is music for people who have archived chats they still know by heart, people who pretend not to check location tags, people who move cities and then learn that the mind did not pack correctly.

Nevler does not flatten that feeling into easy sadness. She lets it stay awkward, romantic, funny, claustrophobic, and oddly beautiful.

The production also gives the EP strong replay value. Sequoia glows. Unfair burns sideways. Sunshine sits close. ”

“Velvet” floats off with a final flash of odd magic. Across all four tracks, Nevler’s violin becomes the emotional thread, while Chris Peters shapes the crowded ideas into a clean, affecting arc.

Kevin Garcia’s drums add impact without crowding the tenderness.

For a debut production effort, A Handful of Moons has real personality. It does not chase scale for attention.

It wins through detail, feeling, and a voice that sounds ready to get stranger, braver, and even more specific.

Nevler has opened a door with this EP, and the next room already feels worth entering.