A few years ago, Jasmine Cruickshank found herself adrift. After coming out as trans, the English singer-songwriter got divorced and decamped from Bristol to Manchester, where she slept on floors and discovered a new wellspring of inspiration: her true self.
“I really struggled, in the years leading up to my transition, to write,” says Cruickshank, 33, whose band, Jasmine.4.t, is one of the newest signees to Phoebe Bridgers’ Saddest Factory Records. “Now, I’m struggling to keep up with the songs that I’m writing on a daily basis. I don’t think you can really express feelings when you’re disconnected from yourself.”
Cruickshank has been playing music since age six, when she inherited a guitar from her late uncle. She wrote her first song in the back of her grandparents’ car when she was five — a little ditty about an egg traveling over rooftops and mountains. Fed on a steady diet of Elliott Smith, Daniel Johnston, and Iron & Wine, she tried her hand at punk, indie rock, drone, and folk, until she lit upon her sound: equal parts sweet and wistful, raw and ragged. “I was always in bands,” she says. “I just loved it. A big part of writing songs is just how I process emotions.”
She never really considered music a career option, though. She used to record Johnston covers and give them to local coffee shops to sell — then forget to go back to get her earnings. So, like many young folks with a dream, Cruickshank went back to school, attending the prestigious Oxford University to study math. In the end, though, the experience just sent her into a deep depression. “Going to Oxford was a huge privilege,” she says. “But it also fucking sucked, because Oxford is incredibly transphobic and queerphobic, and it just pushed me really far into the closet. I was diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome and spent a lot of time in bed after university.”
The Covid pandemic saw another dip in Cruickshank’s physical and mental health; she was struck by long Covid, and had to have a heart operation as a result. “I was in bed for a long time again, which is when I decided to transition,” she says. “Life’s too short. I think a lot of trans women started their transitions during lockdown.”
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Through it all, though, Cruickshank wrote — first for her own label, Breakfast Records (which she founded from bed after college), and then for Saddest Factory after opening for Lucy Dacus on a U.K. tour. At that point, the band was just Cruickshank on banjo and acoustic guitar, accompanied by her friend Tom Crosley-Thorn on upright bass. That tour cemented Cruickshank’s friendship with Dacus, though — and a collaborative spark.
“Actually, Lucy was one of the first people who I came out to as a woman,” Cruickshank recalls. “I remember when I wrote a song called ‘Skin on Skin,’ I sent the demo to Lucy, and the response was like, ‘I would love to produce this one day.’ I didn’t expect anything to come of it, though.” Still, Cruickshank sent a bunch of demos to Dacus, who played them for Bridgers. “Lucy texted me saying: ‘Oh, we just switched on the tracks in the car, and Phoebe is here, too, and she wants to sign you.’”
Cruickshank was thrilled. She put together an all-trans lineup of musicians in Manchester and flew to L.A., where Dacus, Bridgers, and Julien Baker — a.k.a. the arena-headlining trio boygenius — joined forces to produce Cruickshank’s 2025 LP, You Are the Morning. Released earlier this year, with backing vocals from all three members of boygenius (as well as guitars from Baker), it’s a rumination on identity, mental illness, and the highs and lows of a life on the brink of being fully lived. One of the highlights is that first demo, “Skin on Skin,” a rare glimpse of sunshiny love.
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“I think of songs as little landmarks in your life, and when you sing them, you make sense of your trajectory,” Cruickshank says. When she plays them live to her growing legion of fans, these little landmarks take on new meaning.
“I’m singing these songs to audience members who are coming to terms with their identity,” she adds. “I think that seeing me as an example of someone who has survived… I think that gives other people a lot of hope.”
