Singer-Songwriter Ashlyn Uribe Branches Out with Autobiographical Film Project

It’s a still, muggy July night, but onstage at Starlight on 22nd, a storm is brewing.

Accompanied on drums and keyboards by her producer and husband Michael Finster, singer-songwriter Ashlyn Uribe delivers a succession of her playful, seductive dance pop tunes in a warm, rangy mezzo-soprano. Midway through her set, Uribe pivots to the piano-driven power ballad “heat lightning.”

Like the tune’s titular atmospheric phenomenon, Uribe’s vivid lyrics build like a gathering, darkening cloudbank lighting up from within. “I feel so far from me / But it’s colder when I wait, I’d rather scream / Through a million little ways I burn and I bleed…”

The unbearable tension of Uribe’s litany of internalized, self-sabotaging stressors is released in a hair-raising vocal crescendo, a tempest of catharsis and resolve.

“Old habits die hard/ Addiction’s a deep scar/ I’d love to think I’ve come far, so far … from me…”

The song is one of five on Uribe’s autobiographical EP string of pearls. The 2024 release aims to exorcise the trauma visited upon three generations of women in Uribe’s family by some of its men.

“[I] recognized that I can tell a story that can be heartbreaking and painful, but there can also be renewal, healing and forgiveness at the end of it,” Uribe says.

The songs feel universal because Uribe focuses on the emotional impacts of familial trauma, rather than its specific causes. Meanwhile, on a personal level, the EP has proven so successful at fostering healing for Uribe and her family that the singer-songwriter-actor has recently added filmmaker to her list of accomplishments.

Uribe is wrapping up production on a short film adaptation of the EP, called String of Pearls: Unseen, which started shooting around Charlotte in May 2025.

Uribe is also writing material for her debut full-length album, which plays to her other strengths — crafting playful, dancey, yet emotionally rich pop.

“In three words, I’d say [my music is] vibrant, intuitive and fluid,” Uribe says.

Uribe had a rocky home life growing up in a strict evangelical Christian family in Matthews. Though her parents divorced when she was 6 years old, they both encouraged Uribe’s interest in singing and acting. Her father, a soccer coach, even landed her gigs singing the national anthem before a few matches. Uribe also wrote poetry and music, which she kept to herself.

That wasn’t all she hid. Early on, Uribe felt emotionally and sexually attracted to women, but she buried those feelings.

A musical theatre kid in middle and high school, Uribe attended the South Carolina School of the Arts at Anderson University, where she earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in voice and acting.

In college, she accepted her queerness and began dating women. By then, Uribe had convinced herself that she wanted to go to New York City to break into the musical theatre scene. Saving barely enough money for two month’s rent, Uribe moved to NYC in January 2019 and quickly grew lonely and disillusioned by impersonal casting cattle calls.

Her drinking, which started in college, deepened into alcoholism, and by June 2019, she was back in Charlotte, dejected and unsure of her next move. Singer-songwriter Natalie Carr, still early in her own career, befriended Uribe and helped her write the hook for her sultry debut single, “Take Your Time.”

Attending Wednesday night karaoke at Petra’s, Uribe stepped offstage after singing “God Is a Woman” by Ariana Grande, a key inspiration for her, and met Eli Prier, who writes and performs cinematic pop songs as Eli the Fool. Eli introduced Uribe to her producer, Michael Finster, who was also at Petra’s.

“It sounds corny, but Michael and I instantly had this connection,” Uribe remembers.

Finster, who cofounded nationally acclaimed indie-rock band Flagship with guitarist Drake Margolnick in 2011, asked to hear Uribe’s songs. He liked her material and offered to produce her.

“[Michael] taught me that songwriting is a muscle; you have to work it,” Uribe says.

Uribe was exclusively dating women at the time, so she was surprised to feel a growing emotional connection with Finster. The creative collaborators eventually became a couple, marrying in March 2025.

In the meantime, Uribe released a string of singles produced by Finster at Snug Records Studio near Salisbury: “Veils” (2019), “Can’t Teach Me” (2020), “Bleed & Bloom” (2021) and “White Noise” (2022). Uribe characterizes the vibrant, bedroom pop and EDM-adjacent tunes as fun, sexy and a little naive.

“[They have] a bitchy kind of aesthetic that I always love,” she says.

Uribe’s ‘pearls’ of wisdom inspire a film

Ashlyn Uribe’s explosion of creativity culminated in the string of pearls EP, recorded in Uribe and Finster’s Huntersville home studio.

“I’ve always had this dream to tell a story conceptually through music about what I went through and what my family went through, especially the women in my family, in a way that sets me free,” Uribe says.

The EP follows an impressionistic narrative, addressing the nostalgia and safety of childhood in songs like “peter rabbit.” After the instrumental “idlewild interlude,” which incorporates the sound of a VHS machine fast-forwarding, Uribe addresses more recent psychological distress and hard-won “pearls of wisdom” in tunes like the slow burning “heat lightning.”

During this time, Uribe also confronted her alcoholism and worked towards sobriety. Today, she has been sober for over four years.

Concurrently, Uribe started working on Danny Go!, an educational music video channel tailored for children ages 3-7. Co-launched by Finster, host Daniel Coleman, Coleman’s wife Mindy and former Flagship member Matthew Padgett, the Davidson-produced project has spawned touring shows and currently boasts 5 million YouTube subscribers.

Uribe has worked as an actor on the successful series, recently voicing Squeaks the Dragon in The Bravest Knight. Finster plays the silly and lovable character Bearhead on the series.

Since the tragic death of Coleman’s 14-year-old son Isaac in May, production on Danny Go! is on hiatus, but Uribe says writing and prep for future episodes and tours are proceeding apace.

In the meantime, Uribe has been writing, performing in and acting as assistant director for her passion project, the String of Pearls film.

“The film is a hybrid that blends the worlds of songwriting and music videos with narrative storytelling about a family who experiences generational trauma time and time again in a cycle,” Uribe offers. “The daughter comes to a fork in the road and must decide if it’s possible to break those patterns.”

With Waxhaw standing in for 1940s Charlotte and Myrtle Beach providing a setting for the family’s seaside sojourns, the production is slated to complete principal photography in August. Uribe has already launched her production company Rabbithole Productions to navigate the distribution process.

Uribe has also turned her attention to creating and releasing more music. With funky beats, bratty lyrics and coquettish lyrics, her June 2025 single “obviously” seems to signal a return of the sexy dance pop of the singles Uribe released earlier in her career, but with a crucial difference. The song’s playfulness and erotic charge is controlled by its protagonist, a confident woman fully comfortable in her own skin.

“Whispers in the corner baby want your makeup on me/ Not to be entitled but I think you only want me…” she sings.

“I think all of my writing within the indie-pop vein is so much richer because of string of pearls and the writing that I did there,” Uribe maintains. She hopes listeners encountering her music will embrace its message that encourages self-assuredness and self-expression.

That takeaway extends to the deeper, darker emotional currents plumbed by String of Pearls, in both its film and music iterations. Uribe stresses that her advocacy for self-love and compassion applies to both men and women trapped in generational trauma.

“I don’t paint anyone as a villain,” Uribe insists. “That’s not how I see people’s souls and their journeys and their pain.”

It’s a potent message, utilizing art and well-crafted pop music to foster real connections, forgiveness and understanding. Through hard-won healing and insight, Uribe encourages self-love for everyone.