On Cruel Joke, the 22-year-old Cherokee singer-songwriter Ken Pomeroy strips things down to their emotional studs, delivering a dozen raw, rootsy songs that linger like a bruise. Armed with a deceptively sweet soprano, a gift for gut-punch imagery, and a guitar that alternately soothes and stings, Pomeroy has created an album that feels like a shared secret between the wounded and the wise.

Raised in Moore, Oklahoma, and named ᎤᏍᏗ ᏀᏯ ᏓᎶᏂᎨ ᎤᏍᏗᎦ — "Little Wolf with Yellow Hair" — by her mamaw, Pomeroy’s childhood was marked by early trauma and adult-sized emotions she struggled to name. So she wrote. And from age 11 on, songwriting became the one place where nothing had to be buried. “Once I get it out into a song, I don’t have to worry about it anymore,” she says. “If it’s a traumatic thing that happened, I kind of act as if it’s gone.”

Cruel Joke is the sound of Pomeroy finding freedom in confession. “Flannel Cowboy” opens the record with one of her trademark lyrical punches: “I broke you like a mirror into pieces.” “Stranger” follows with a line so quiet yet jarring it stops you cold: “The wind keeps on hitting me like my mother used to.” It’s these lines, delivered with startling calm and clarity, that define Pomeroy’s ability to devastate without ever raising her voice.

Cruel Joke is filled with moments of self-realization, sly humor, and spiritual grounding. “Coyote,” featuring fellow Oklahoman John Moreland, confronts her own failings through the lens of Native folklore. “Cicadas” becomes a metaphor for the parts of herself she once tried to silence but now lets sing. Animals, omens, and the natural world thread throughout the album, rooted in her heritage but reimagined through her own lens.

Pomeroy’s music is catching on, and fast. Her song “Wall of Death” landed on the Twisters soundtrack, and “Cicadas” made an emotional cameo on Reservation Dogs. She’s opened for Iron & Wine, Lukas Nelson, and American Aquarium, but she still talks about it all like she stumbled into a dream. “I feel like something way above me pointed at me and said, ‘Okay, here’s your path,’” she admits.

There’s a quiet confidence underneath the ache, though — one that suggests Pomeroy is exactly where she’s meant to be. Cruel Joke is proof. Whether she’s unpacking childhood wounds, writing an accidental love song (“Wolf in Sheep’s Clothes”), or turning emotional wreckage into folk masterpieces, Ken Pomeroy makes sure nobody listening feels like they’re in it alone. And in doing so, she’s becoming one of this generation’s most vital new voices in contemporary folk.