The Nashville Artist Crafting Folk Music For The Soul’s Twilight Hours

There’s something ancient in Mikel Rafael’s voice—like the whisper of a mountain stream or the low hum of memory returning. With The Eternal Hour, his debut EP, the Nashville-based artist quietly but powerfully announces his presence.

The three-song project—structured like a daydream—is filled with literary allusion and introspective yearning. From William Blake’s eternal hour to the echo of a mythic song in the woods, Rafael explores the intersection of art and emotion with remarkable grace. His sound draws from the Celtic canon but is also unmistakably personal, the product of years lived between worlds—Houston, Hong Kong, the Philippines, California.

Rafael’s lyrics carry the weight of a poet, but it’s the emotional nakedness of his delivery that sets him apart. His voice is not flashy—it’s felt. In “The Stream,” he sings of a journey toward something unseen, maybe unattainable. In “Rise Into The Gentle Night,” he doesn’t close the story—he opens it wider.

And then there’s the visual layer. Working with director Shane Weisman and cinematographer James Glasgow, Rafael crafted a trilogy of music videos as haunting as the songs themselves—mist-drenched, half-lit, and undeniably cinematic.

Folk may be an old language, but with The Eternal Hour, Mikel Rafael is writing a new dialect—one that speaks directly to the soul’s quieter questions.

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