A talented songwriter and prolific performer, Shelley splits her time between solo outings and collaborations with other area musicians like Daniel Martin Moore and Joe Manning, with whom she issued the albums Farthest Field (2012) and Outside Stay Outside (2014), respectively, and with the old-timey music trio Maiden Radio, which also features the talents of Julia Purcell and Cheyenne Mize. Shelley released her solo debut, Ginko, in 2012, followed by the No Quarter-issued Electric Ursa in 2014, the latter of which saw her working alongside fleet-fingered guitarist Nathan Salsburg. 2015's Over and Even found Shelley and Salsburg delivering an evocative set of country-folk originals that flirted with English and Irish traditional music.
For her eponymous fifth studio LP, Shelley, Salsburg, and James Elkington headed up to Chicago to record with Wilco's Jeff Tweedy behind the board. The first single from the record, "Wild Indifference," appeared in March 2017, with the full-length album arriving later that May. For 2019's Billboard-charting Like the River Loves the Sea, Shelley traveled to Reykjavík, Iceland, where she recorded with a handful of local musicians; Bonnie Prince Billy also made a cameo appearance on the album. The following year saw the release of the concert LP Live at the Bomhard, which was recorded in Louisville the year prior. ~ James Christopher Monger, Rovi