“It’s a constant, slow move between tastes.”

This may be an understatement on the part of Valentin Prince, the self-taught, self-recording, genre-fluid auteur who is experiencing quite the burst of productivity. Most recently, in November, he dropped an album called “Kiss Your Hands” — a raw and wrenching document of sudden romantic devastation and real-time creative processing. Guitar-driven and sincere, it’s the kind of project one makes precisely once.

“This is kind of my Bon Iver moment,” he says. “Like, lock myself in a room and just cry and just get it out.”

Another Bon Iver parallel: Prince approaches genre with an autodidact’s curiosity, and the other projects he recorded in 2025 reflect it. He’s got two more albums in the can, including an instrumental trio outing and an alternative R&B set due out in 2026.

“There are several distinct phases for me musically,” he says when prompted to chart his stylistic pathway to this point. He started playing guitar at 8 years old, helped along by a father who taught him a few basic chords. Around the age of 15 came his open-mic era, which foregrounded singer-songwriter music, acoustic blues and traditional material. After a period of inactivity in which Prince focused on cycling, he played in what he calls his “first real band,” a soulful power trio called Prince Bellrose based in Harrisonburg, where Prince lived after growing up in Boston and before moving to Richmond in 2022.

Next came a period of what Prince calls “intense growth” in which he applied his considerable guitar skills to jazz, a genre his dad introduced him to early on. “I really sat down and was like, ‘What the fuck are these guys doing? How is this happening?’” That deep-dive yielded a series of “Solo Val” albums currently sitting at three volumes. Along the way, he also played in the Harrisonburg-based shoegaze-leaning band, Babe Lewis, and he performed as half of Au Fromage, an old-world-style swing guitar duo — all in addition to the eponymous album he released in 2024 that drifts between rock and alternative R&B.

It all adds up to a Bandcamp catalog that likely has something to suit your mood, whatever that mood may be. “Wherever I’m at now, I don’t know,” he says. “It’s hard to pin down. I have all these different things.”

That’s what makes “Kiss Your Hands” so compelling: It’s the exception that proves the rule — the sound of a boundless musician rooted firmly in one place, physically, emotionally and stylistically. I spoke with Prince over FaceTime recently while he was in the very spot where the album was made, a studio space he recently acquired and shares with a friend. We explored the impact of those surroundings on “Kiss Your Hands” and how those songs fit in his exceptionally multifaceted musical journey.

Style Weekly: “Kiss Your Hands” is as intimate as singer-songwriter records come. How did you manage to set that tone?

Valentin Prince: I think the intimate nature is kind of baked in, because it was such a personal — and is such a personal — thing that I was going through. You don’t have to be a genius to tell this is a breakup album. By virtue of it being that, and me being alone in this space just going through it, it’s kind of unavoidable for it to feel that way. It was a very private processing of feelings. There was no one else involved in the songwriting, in the mixing. The only other person really involved in it was the mastering engineer, [Danny Gibney], who’s been a friend of mine and a collaborator for a while. So in all those ways, it was just me facing myself and facing those feelings.

Were the songs written over a concentrated period of time?

This is honestly crazy to say out loud, because it feels so antithetical to how most music is made, and it sounds overly dramatic, but I kid you not, it was a two-week period. I did nothing else… All that stuff came up at once. The benefit to writing all that and recording it right away is it feels unified. It’s all my brain, my feelings in that moment, that snapshot of me then. It has that unified feel, which I’ve always been striving for. But it’s much easier when you just write it all at once and then just do it right there. I don’t know if I’d be able to do that again, because it was a uniquely painful and weird thing, and hopefully I don’t have to deal with those feelings again.

Do you feel any distance from those feelings listening to “Kiss Your Hands” now?

It’s an ever-changing feeling when I listen to it. In short, yes, I am more removed from it now. It’s only three months ago. It was the beginning of September [when] I recorded all of it. But yes, it is different. This maybe sounds crazy, because it’s such a short time ago, but I already feel like a different person than that person, and I think that will continue.

I had hesitations about doing it, because I’ve never done something so personal publicly in any capacity. One of my big fears was, “Am I going to regret putting this shit out there? Is this going to be something I look back on in a year or a month, even, and be like, “Oh shit. Did I have to do that?” Luckily, though, I haven’t regretted it at all. And the response has been so insanely positive from people in my life and also people I don’t know, so that’s helped as well.

Speaking of change, how did you make it from Boston to Harrisonburg to Richmond?

I think I’m the only person to ever move to Harrisonburg not for JMU… I was doing all these big, huge bike trips — multi-month, traveling that way. It was amazing. I did a trip called the Great Divide, which goes from Canada to Mexico, and I met some people who lived in the Shenandoah Valley, and we rode together, became trail buddies, and they were like, “Come visit after the trip. We’d love to have you.” And when I got home to Boston after that, I was so pumped up on traveling, I knew I had to make a big change in my life. So I — kind of impulsively — moved to Harrisonburg through that. I did end up getting a job at a bike shop before I made the move. but other than that, it was like, “Let’s just try this.” So that’s how I ended up in Virginia — kind of a crazy, random thing.

As far as Richmond, it’s a well-worn path from from Harrisonburg to Richmond. A lot of people do that. I always heard legends of how cool it is and all this stuff, and I always felt like it would be a cool place to live. When you visit Richmond from Harrisonburg, it’s definitely like, “Wow, all these interesting people everywhere, and there’s music everywhere, and they’ve got tattoos…” I remember I visited here at like 23 or something. Eventually it just happened.

How did your path cross with Danny Gibney’s? 

I feel like I first met Danny through cycling, but I don’t remember exactly. Because he was really into cycling. A lot of people who live [in Harrisonburg] are, for whatever reason… But with [Prince Bellerose], we had worked with him back in 2019, or something like that. So we had recorded a bunch of stuff with him, and then he’s been the go-to person for me for seven years. It’s really nice because he has a pretty good idea of my tastes, and he also knows me as a person. It was much easier to handing over this album, which is extremely personal and vulnerable. I’m sure I could have done it with other people, but it was nice to know it was in his hands.

How did you develop your own skills as a producer and engineer? 

It’s definitely been trial-by-fire. There’s a bit of imposter syndrome there, which is a consistent thing, but I have recorded myself pretty extensively. You learn a lot just doing it, trying to make it sound good, copying other sounds. Because I have no real formal training, I’m sure there’s a ton of shit I’m doing wrong [laughs]. But it’s like being an independent musician: When I’m doing it for myself, if it sounds good to me at the end, then it is good.

But initially, I think it would have been [during] COVID. I have a distinct memory: I was working at the bike shop, and they sent us home for a couple weeks because no one knew what the hell was going on. I was just bored, didn’t have anything to do, [and] I was like, “I’m gonna try to record some demos.” So that’s when I first got into trying to record, and I’ve been pretty consistent with it over the years. Again, Danny, who I’ve worked with a lot — I’ve copied him a lot and learned a lot from being in sessions with him, watching what he’s doing, and then more recently, asking him directly, “How the hell are you doing that? Why does that sound so good?”

Since having this studio space here, which is new for this year, I’ve recorded some friends’ bands and I’ve done a couple of professional sessions and stuff. That’s a super-fast way to learn, as well. Setting up a session for a band, it’s like, “OK, pressure’s on. Let’s do this.”

I hear you have a couple more albums already in the can. What are those like and when will we hear them?

In 2025, I recorded three albums, which I didn’t expect to do. I didn’t set out to have an insane output. It just kind of happened that way. So the way it works chronologically and the way it’s going to be released are different. In January, I recorded an instrumental trio album called “Nexus,” which is trying to be a Julian-Lage-meets-Khruangbin kind of thing. I always wanted to do a live trio album where it’s just three of us sitting down and playing, no overdubs, just a live feel. So we did that in January, and that’s coming out this January 10, 2026. About a year turnaround, a more normal turnaround for making music than the last one.

And then this summer I got the studio space that I’m in, which I share with a buddy, and that excited me about [how] for the first time, I can record drums myself with little limitations. I was listening to a lot of Steve Lacy, Mk.gee, D’Angelo — all the alternative R&B stuff, which I really like. So I have a pop-alternative-R&B album called “For Real,” which is coming out April 23. I recorded all that roughly over three or four months in the middle of 2025 and that was the thing I was all excited about and set to push and promote. And then September came around, and I [experienced] this huge emotional turmoil. “Kiss Your Hands” was a totally unplanned thing.

So those are the two coming out. It’s a lot. I’m trying to manage how to promote it all effectively.

What are some new directions you’d like to take in the future?

When I’m writing my songs and recording them, [you] start to feel like some kind of composer. Once it becomes easy to add a bunch of parts and slot them in together, it makes you think: more parts, more people. It’d be great to have a 10-person band and arrange for that and make that actually work. If money were no object, that would be exceptional — to be able to have several incredible background singers, and to be able to have another couple guitars that are holding it down, and some horns. That would be excellent. Obviously, it’s a lot of rehearsal and a lot of money and a lot of time, but it is fun. And it’s very validating for the song.

To hear and purchase “Kiss Your Hands,” visit valentinprince.bandcamp.com. Valentin Prince will perform at Black Iris on Saturday, Dec. 27. Jonathan Paige Brown Jr. will also perform. For more information, visit valentinprince.com.