Casey Dienel Returns With My Heart Is an Outlaw — Album Release Show on December 13 in Los Angeles

After eight years away from the studio, Casey Dienel is stepping back into the spotlight with My Heart Is an Outlaw, her seventh album and a vivid reintroduction to an artist who has long defied conventions. To mark the release, Dienel will celebrate with a special record release show on Saturday, December 13th at Scribble (5541 York Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90042). Tickets are $20, with doors opening at 8pm, followed by Adam Schatz at 8:30pm and Casey Dienel at 9:15pm.

The night promises to be a full-circle moment for an artist whose new work expands her creative universe while pulling listeners closer than ever before. At the heart of My Heart Is an Outlaw lies a series of essential questions: What does freedom look like when it isn't tied to escape, but to presence? Can we build a meaningful life full of love without being domesticated by it? What does resistance through radical openness sound like? For Dienel, the answer begins with joy.

“Joy, especially queer joy, is revolutionary… Even in the face of everything else, I wanted to show that happiness is still possible—and necessary.”

My Heart Is an Outlaw is the result of a renewed faith in collaboration—a radical act of surrender for an artist who once preferred to work alone. Its 11 tracks are cinematic in scope, shaped by layered storytelling and melodic risk-taking. Recorded at Altamira Sound in Los Angeles, Figure 8 Recording in New York, and Chamber of Commerce in Vermont, the album zooms fluidly between intimate detail and sweeping emotional panoramas.

The record is built on a deep bench of collaborators, including over a dozen session players and a powerhouse creative team: producer Adam Schatz (Japanese Breakfast, Landlady, Neko Case), mixing engineer Jake Aron (Solange, Snail Mail), and mastering engineer Heba Kadry (Björk, Sade, John Cale). The shift toward communal creation became a thematic cornerstone of the album itself—connection, transformation, and the kaleidoscope that opens when one shows up fully, imperfections and all.

Tonally, the album draws inspiration from My Own Private Idaho, as well as pop touchstones like Born in the U.S.A. and Faith, offering a study in living outside cultural scripts. With basic tracks laid down live at Altamira, the ensemble—bassist Spencer Zahn, guitarists Carly Bond (Meernaa) and Meg Duffy (Hand Habits), drummer Max Jaffe, and Schatz on synths—built an expansive sonic house around Dienel’s piano-driven songwriting. “The heart has a mind of its own. It's the thing holding you back that you have to set free on your own time, in your own way. Nobody can do it for you,” she explains, adding that the very thing that makes you an outlaw to yourself “might be your saving grace.”

Lyrically and emotionally, the album explores the fragmentation of time, the slipperiness of memory, and the impossibility of truly knowing what someone else is thinking. Its central tension is internal: the saboteur, the critic, the “butcher” within. But rather than exile these voices, Dienel leans into integration—a running toward, not from. The result is a record that asks listeners to hold on loosely, embracing contradiction as a source of liberation.

Dienel’s songwriting process remains as instinctual as ever.

“I’ve been writing since I was eight…songs are the houseguests that show up on their own time… you have one choice: to answer the call or not. I always have.”

That openness—to inspiration, to community, to trust—is the defining energy of My Heart Is an Outlaw. The album is both a reclamation of agency and a celebration of craft: a document of the long, winding path from isolation back to creative communion.

On December 13th, Los Angeles audiences will hear this new chapter come alive. For an artist whose work has always balanced vulnerability with vision, My Heart Is an Outlaw is a powerful reminder: freedom isn’t escape—it’s presence.