Pippa Hoover has spent the last decade building a music career that resists easy categorization. As the cellist behind the folk-pop duo Honey Magpie and a solo artist in her own right, she moves between genres with fluidity and purpose. Originally from California, she landed in North Carolina’s Triangle region in 2012 and has been quietly building her creative practice ever since. She’s also an avid hiker and backpacker, and those experiences inform her songwriting in ways both literal and subtle.
Her new single, On the Mountaintop, Alone, draws inspiration from Occoneechee Mountain, the Orange County landmark that has become central to her creative life. The release marks her first solo work since her 2018 debut album, and it finds her expanding sonically, layering her classical cello roots with rock-influenced textures.
I sat down with Hoover to talk about her influences, her path to music, and the nature that drives her songwriting.
What have you been listening to lately?
Pippa: I was actually talking with my bandmate Rachael Leah about this recently because I feel like there are two types of musicians: huge music heads who just love and listen to everything, and then people like me who are very specific and will go long stretches without listening to anything. But when I find an artist, I’ll probably be obsessed with them for a good while, like a year to three years or whatever, even if it’s just one song that I’ll play on repeat.
I’ve been in a listening slump. There are some artists that I’ve been really into for a period of time in semi-recent years, like Gillian Welch and The Secret Sisters. I really like Dessa, which is a departure from my own music because she’s a rapper. But her lyrics are really amazing. That’s something that I like and am always looking for.
What is the first musician that you remember discovering on your own and obsessing over?
Pippa: The foundational music for me was The Supremes and The Beatles. Those were artists that my mom listened to a lot, so that sound is drilled into my head from childhood.
My biggest obsession as a teenager was Green Day; I think you can hear that in some of my pop-punky melodies. I’ve definitely drifted in a more folk singer-songwriter direction than that. But when I first bought a guitar, I was like I’m gonna be in a punk band. It’s hard to say what made the folk transition, but I did get into Elliott Smith shortly after that. So that was definitely an influence.
And discovering Rasputina, the cello band led by Melora Creager, made me realize singing and playing cello was a possibility. I had always assumed I had to play guitar or piano to be a singer-songwriter before I found her, and I was definitely obsessed with her for several years.
When did you start playing an instrument and writing music?
Pippa: I’ve basically always been writing music. I took piano lessons when I was a really little kid and would just make up melodies on the piano, then I’d make my dad write them down. I commuted to this Montessori elementary school in a neighboring town with my friend, and we would make parodies of children’s songs and just write our own lyrics. So I’ve always been playing around with music.
It was actually after I bought my first CD, which was Celine Dion‘s Falling Into You, where I started recording myself singing into a tape recorder acapella and thought I was gonna be a pop star. Those songs were very embarrassing. I’d look up words in a rhyme dictionary and use words incorrectly because I was writing about love at like 10 years old. [laughs]
At which point did you start performing live?
Pippa: Probably not until my first open mic night in the middle of college. I didn’t really start trying to pursue music until I moved to the Triangle actually because I had just come back from this job in Russia that I quit suddenly because it was awful and I was like “I can’t do this with my life.” I had to do what I really wanted to do, so that’s when I actually started playing around in the area for people.
Image credit: Diasio Photography
What brought you to the Triangle from Russia?
Pippa: My parents moved out here in 2006, right around the time I graduated from high school, so I had been coming here for the summers. After college, I was working on securing a job in Russia, as I was a Russian major and wanted to utilize my degree and enhance my language skills. I worked at a school teaching English, but it was a weird situation. It wasn’t just an English school; this man had built an American-style ranch home in Russia right after the fall of the Soviet Union. All the classes were taught in the rooms of this house, so I would teach in the attic or the kitchen.
I was not enjoying it and quit 10 months into my year there. I hadn’t lined up any housing, and my parents were here, so I just ended up here in 2012 and then slowly got into the music scene. I started playing my solo music as a cello and guitar duo with various guitarists around 2013 or 2014. I joined my band Honey Magpie in late 2014. Our first show was in 2015. It took a while to find people to work with and get into a situation where I could play out.
How has the music scene evolved over that time?
Pippa: COVID was definitely a huge thing, obviously. I’ve seen many venues come and go. Early on, we thought we were cursed because we’d play a venue and then it would shut down. Some bands that were sort of big or felt big to us when we were first starting are no more, and that’s crazy. But I’m not super plugged in to the music community outside of playing shows.
Your new songs are influenced by Occoneechee Mountain, lyrically and sonically. What is it about that part of local nature that inspires your music?
Pippa: I don’t know if it’s this area and more that I tend to draw my inspiration from, what’s going on around me. Hiking and exploring nature is the major thing I’m doing outside of music, so a lot of these songs took some imagery from there and used it to talk about something else, even if they’re not about nature. “Rat Snake” is about past situations that you can’t forgive and not so much about the mountain, but the main symbol that I use in it is something I saw in Occoneechee Mountain. “On the Mountaintop Alone” is a bit more literal.
Do you find songs come to you while you’re on the trail, or does the processing happen later?
Pippa: I’m not even really sure. I would say it’s more on reflection, but sometimes I amwalking through the woods coming up with song ideas. With songs it takes me some time and separation before I can write about something. It’s pretty rare for me to experience something and write a song about it two days later.
Your new singles have a bit more of a folk rock sound to them. What sparked your evolution into direction when writing and recording?
Pippa: I’ve just always been kind of an eclectic writer. My first album is very folk, even leaning into bluegrass. A lot of that was where I recorded, which was with Jerry Brown at the Rubber Room Studio. He has a great ear, his studio has been wonderful and it definitely pushed the album in that direction. That time was kind of at the end of that Americana revival with Mumford & Sons, so it was in the air. [laughs]
I’m not sure that folky bluegrass is my authentic sound. I don’t have a particular genre, I just want to write what I like. These sounds sounded more rocky, I’ve got some songs that I haven’t recorded yet that are more pop punk, and I’ve got some that are more like country songs. I just don’t really care too much about genre.
Image credit: Diasio Photography
What did working with James Phillips bring to these songs?
Pippa: I came with a pretty solid idea of what I wanted the songs to sound like. But James came up with guitar solos and synths on “Rat Snake”. And then for “On the Mountaintop Alone” he wrote the piano part. He also did the drums for both songs, which was all him.
How does your process differ when you’re working on your own or collaborating on a solo project with a producer versus a band environment?
Pippa: It depends on what engineers were working with because Honey Magpie has also worked with Jerry for our two albums. The process is similar; the main difference is that more people were involved in the part writing. When it’s my stuff, it’s just me. But with Jerry, we approached things similarly, where we had our parts ready and then we hired session musicians to play the instruments we didn’t play, such as drums and bass. A lot of those parts were improvised by the session musicians.
In both projects I have a pretty big hand in the part writing. It’s something I like to do. I play cello in Honey Magpie and it’s a more melodic instrument so I’m writing a lot of melody lines. If and when we had violin, I would write the duo or sometimes the violinist would write it and then I would play it.
What are your goals for the rest of the year and 2026?
Pippa: I just joined an orchestra and I haven’t played in an orchestra in 10 years, so keeping up with that has been keeping me occupied. I have a lot of songs in the queue to be recorded. It’s just a matter of which ones I am doing, who am I doing them with, and how am I paying for it, which is a big concern.
In addition to songwriting I write satire novellas. It’s been kind of hard balancing the two and I’ve kind of been questioning which one I want to lean into, or if I want to keep it more equal. I’m definitely further along in my music career than I am in my writing career. But the writing is very joyful and there’s a lot of pain involved in being a performing musician. Just trying to get press, trying to get shows, trying to find people to record with. Whereas with writing I open my computer, I do what I want, and I publish it on the internet.
Honey Magpie has a few unreleased songs that we need to record as well. We’ve also started parodying our own songs and working on a parody for some other popular songs. That’s been really fun, so I’m seeing some kind of comedy show in our future. We’ve previously done a show where we were kind of showcasing our comedy sides because we both like to do that kind of thing.
Who are some of your favorite local or North Carolina specific artists?
Pippa: One of my favorite artists no longer performs anymore and I don’t know if she’s ever gonna get back to it but her name’s Elizabeth Avalie. I don’t know what she’s doing right now but I played a few shows with her, she played piano for me at my release show, and I just love her songs.
I also like The Moon and You out of Asheville because they’re a cello and guitar duo. If you’ve got a cello, I’m gonna like you. And of course, I like my Honey Magpie bandmate, Rachael Leah. We are in a band together, but we also have our own solo projects, and she is releasing an album next year.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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