This first joint project from boundary-pushing indie artists Julien Baker and TORRES is many years in the making. The two initially met at a show in 2016 and kept in touch, and during the pandemic lockdown they talked about making a collaborative country record—specifically, a queer country record. Five years later—and on the heels of Baker’s other indie all-star team-up in boygenius—Send a Prayer My Way makes good on that long-gestating idea and marks the latest entry in an exciting and energizing series of country releases from queer artists, like Chappell Roan and Fancy Hagood, unafraid to take up space in a traditionally conservative and gatekeeping genre. TORRES, aka Mackenzie Scott, tells Apple Music that trust was essential to the pair’s writing and recording processes. “We both just followed our gut instinct on this one,” Scott says. “And both of our gut instincts said to let the other person do their thing and not try and interfere too much, and not try to control the process so much that we were creating an environment where we were trying to make the other person do something that they didn’t want to do.” Co-produced with Sarah Tudzin of Illuminati Hotties, Send a Prayer My Way opens on a quiet note with “Dirt,” a delicate ballad about heartbreak and regret accented by mournful fiddle from Balmorhea’s Aisha Burns. The playfully titled “The Only Marble I’ve Got Left” livens up the mood, with Baker and TORRES serving up a darkly sweet love song about trying to stay sane in a world gone mad. “Downhill Both Ways” is a mesmerizing showcase of the pair’s harmonies, as Baker’s soft lilt counters TORRES’s sturdy tone. “Tuesday” digs into the more difficult side of the queer experience, as TORRES sings of falling for a girl whose “mama caught wind that her daughter’s friend might be of the wrong persuasion.” And it wouldn’t be a country record without a drinking song or two, with “Bottom of a Bottle” checking all the boxes: lost faith, a lost woman, and an empty glass bottle. Scott, whose original demo was slower and more mournful, was worried Baker might not be into it. The fact that her worries were unfounded turned out to be a vote of confidence in the strength of their collaboration. “She took it and ran with it,” Scott says. “God, she transformed the song. The piano especially—the piano that you hear on the song is Julien. It breaks my heart.”