Kacey Musgraves Has Never Felt This Grounded Before

Kacey Musgraves is barefoot when we meet. It’s 15 minutes before the launch party for her brand-new Boy Smells candle kicks off, and she’s taking every moment to relax. You see, she’s been on her feet all day, deep in the weeds of helping make the recent event happen. “It’s been really fun and creative,” she says, settling into a long brown couch strewn with bags (and at least two wigs). She had a hand in art-directing nearly all of it, she tells me, from taking the product photos to designing the party space, which has been transformed into a living terrarium decorated with the notes of the scent: sage, moss, and mushrooms. “[I like] getting into that world.”

Unlike some celebrity brand collaborations, Musgraves had both hands in the pot while working with Boy Smells on her new release, called Deeper Well. Candle aficionados and Kacey heads alike will know that this isn’t her first rodeo with the gourmand scent brand, whom she calls “wine sommeliers but for the olfactory senses.” Her 2020 collaboration with the company, Slow Burn, sold out multiple times and became a coveted lockdown item. But when it came to formulating Deeper Well, Musgraves says she knew she wanted to avoid creating a “Slow Burn 2” because “that’s already a cult favorite. Everyone has that one.” (Your chances of copping Deeper Well might be higher, as Boy Smells founder Matthew Herman says they’re “very, very well stocked” this time around.)

Also veering away from the fruity, smoky scent of Slow Burn, Musgraves landed on an earthy, grounding fragrance: The first hit is a sweet, intense raspberry that quickly mellows with an infusion of eucalyptus and sage. Like her songs, its earthiness deeply evokes intimacy, like “hugging someone you really love that has just come in from outside,” she says. That sensation stems directly from her forthcoming album, which, Musgraves says, captures where she is in her life right now: feeling more grounded in herself than ever before, waking up every morning in “a beautiful home right in the heart of the woods.”

Ironically, Musgraves recorded most of the album in Greenwich Village. But like how distance makes the heart grow fonder, “maybe you reach for it more because it's not in your [immediate surrounding],” she says. Similarly, with Deeper Well (the candle), Musgraves says she hopes fans will go on their own transportive journeys, a promise that’s hidden in the lyrical Easter eggs she included on the packaging. She’s only just gotten her first official whiff of the final product not long before we talk — but after putting so much care into choosing the color of the wax and the font on frosted jar, she says it’s every bit as good as she remembers.