BENJAMIN JAY THOMAS

Benjamin Jay Thomas has spent 25 years making music that asks the deepest questions he knows how to ask — and finding, slowly, that the answers were never as far away as he thought.

Originally from Chicago, Thomas built the first chapter of his career as an indie folk singer-songwriter with roots in progressive faith communities, releasing a string of albums — beginning with Grace Will Lead in 2000 — that found him touring churches, listening rooms, and living rooms across the country. Artists like Sufjan Stevens, Bon Iver, Fleet Foxes, and The National shaped his sonic world: intimate, layered, emotionally literate, and unafraid of the sacred.

A move to Southern California in 2016 — and later to the Cascade mountain town of Leavenworth, WA in 2020 — marked a deepening shift. His 2019 album The Way Up documented a season of spiritual deconstruction, the honest reckoning of a faith expanding beyond its former containers. What emerged on the other side was not the absence of the sacred, but a more spacious version of it: the divine located inside human creativity itself, in the earth, in relationship, in the act of making something true.

Behind Your Eyes, The Stars Are Born (2026) is the arrival point of that journey — his eighth full-length album, five years in the making, and his most sonically adventurous and joy-filled work yet. Blending indie folk roots with the warmth and lift of indie pop, the album is a celebration of original human goodness and the seed of creativity alive in every person.

Alongside his recordings, Thomas has become a sought-after producer, song coach, and educator. He has collaborated with artists across the country and around the world — producing dozens of songs and several full albums, and developing a reputation for creating recordings that feel genuinely human. In early 2026 he led The Song Within, a six-week online course in heart-centered songwriting as spiritual practice. That work is now centered in Bring Forth, a Leavenworth-based nonprofit he founded in 2025 around a simple belief: that every person carries songs worth hearing.

As a live artist, Thomas has become known as a curator of transformative experiences. He creates Guided Concerts — immersive gatherings weaving music, poetry, silence, and communal singing — and leads workshops on songwriting as a spiritual practice. He co-founded Illuminate the Night, a sold-out annual solstice celebration at Icicle Creek Center for the Arts. As a member of Shine Song Collective, he has led workshops and performed at Harvard Divinity School's Conference for Arts and Spirituality. He has also performed at Imagine Festival and Conscious Growth Convergence alongside fellow artists Hernan Savastano and Nora B. Heath.