On Friday, October 10, in the dimly lit live music venue Cafe Colonial, Indie rock band Rosemother gets ready to take the stage.
Haley Rae, the singer-songwriter and lead vocalist, along with vocalists Courtney Reeves, lead guitarist Jake Romine, and the rest of the band, get settled on stage to perform.
Rae grabs her guitar with butterfly and rubber duck stickers, adjusts her mic, and with a purple overhead light beaming down on her face, the band begins to play the ‘Waking Hour’ from their latest album.
The raw echoing melodies between Rae and Reeves silenced the room from the start, engaging the crowd from the first song.
“Most of the songs are on our album, It’s Beautiful in Here,” Rae said to the crowd after performing a few songs.
The night continued with the band performing “Guess I don’t feel bad,” “High at the Party,” “Carried Away,” and “Dim,” as the overhead light changed from green, to purple, to blue, to red.
“Is everyone having fun?” Rae asked the crowd right before the band performed their last song. The crowd responded with an exuberant ‘yes,’ as they were captivated by the performance.
Rosemother performs songs from their latest album “It’s Beautiful in Here” on Friday Oct. 10, 2025.Keyshawn Davis/CapRadio
Rosemother Origins
Rosemother is a dream pop indie-rock six-person live band from Sacramento that got its start in 2016 when Rae was recording music in her bedroom and putting it on SoundCloud.
The band’s name originates from Rae’s grandmother’s nickname for her — a rose amongst thorns.
“When I started making music, I was like [in] a wine mom era, and just kind of having fun with that,” Rae said. “And it just eventually combined to be Rosemother. So it was just a callback to her. I just kind of resonated with it.”
In 2017, Rae said she played her first show and that’s when she met Jake Romine, producer and multi-instrumentalist.
Rae said Romine has been helping her run the band and record all of their albums since he joined. They’ve recently dropped their third album, “It’s Beautiful In Here.”
“I feel like we both will get passionate about specific, weird things,” Romine said. ”When we’re writing, we both care about lyrics and the aesthetic and feeling of music in a way that I’ve not found with a lot of other people.”
In 2019, Rae started working and collaborating with vocalist and song-writer, Courtney Reeves, releasing an Extended Play called “Little Syncronisities.” Reeves joined the band as a full member in 2021, according to Rae.
“We were just writing together, and it was super fun just harmonizing with her, and we just started writing a lot together. Me, her and Jake,” Rae said.
Haley Rae and Courtney Reeves of Rosemother performs at Cafe Colonial on Friday Oct. 10, 2025.Keyshawn Davis/CapRadio
Rae has been a musician for as long as she can remember. She grew up in a house where music was abundant — her father was a singer — she sang in the choir and took piano lessons at a young age.
Rae said her grandmother was one of her biggest inspirations, and she would hang out, write poetry, and make up songs with her.
“I guess the combo of all of it became this,” she said.
Beautiful album
According to Rae, she and Romine moved to Los Angeles for a bit when they worked on their previous album, “Room,” which they transitioned more into pop production.
“We learned a lot from that,” she said. “When we came back, I kind of wanted to transition back to my original album, which was like more indie rock and doing the live band stuff. So it definitely took a little bit of time to form those songs.”
Rosemother spent four years developing their latest album after losing the original recordings when their hard drive crashed.
“We basically finished our album, and it got deleted, and then we had to restart it, so it added some years,” Rae said.
Romine said they had a decision to make: either move on or re-record the album after spending so much time working on it.
“We were like, ‘let’s just go back and finish it,’ because we really liked what we had,” he said. “It would feel wrong to just move on and not finish that whole section of our lives.”
Rosemother did their first-ever tour for the “It’s Beautiful in Here” album in August, performing in 10 cities in California and a stop in Reno as well.
“I just hope that we could get our music to more people and that they can relate to it and get something out of it that can improve their life,” he said. “Or something that they could just enjoy, or that could teach them something about themselves or the world around them.”
Rae says she hopes people can relate to her music from their own life experiences.
“I love the fact that people listen at all, but I always just hope, like it resonates with them in some way in their own life.”
Rosemother also had the chance to open for Wallows at Channel 24 in March in front of thousands of people, according to Rae.
The band will have another live show this Friday at Ghost House.
Follow us for more stories like this
CapRadio provides a trusted source of news because of you. As a nonprofit organization, donations from people like you sustain the journalism that allows us to discover stories that are important to our audience. If you believe in what we do and support our mission, please donate today.