Katie Runnels Turns Scars Into New Sound With “Imperfect Beauty”

Katie Runnels doesn’t ease you into her music; she invites you into her bruises, her contradictions, and and her survival. With “Imperfect Beauty,” her first major release in over a decade, the Arizona artist reshapes herself in real time, turning private wounds into a public manifesto. The single floats on an electronic haze that feels almost weightless, but at its core is a gravity only lived experience can provide.

Katie Runnels’ story is key to the way this song lands. She once carved out a place in indie folk-rock with Reality Cloud in 2010 before vanishing into the realities of teaching, family-building, and the grind of life outside the stage lights. When she reemerges now, it isn’t with nostalgia or an attempt to recreate who she once was. “Imperfect Beauty” doesn’t look back—it plants its flag in the messy present.

The track itself is sparse and deliberate, with producer Nic Leo giving her voice plenty of air to breathe. There’s even a banjo buried in the layers, left slightly off-kilter as a sonic metaphor: beauty isn’t in precision, it’s in the cracks. The whole song feels like it could fall apart at any moment, and that’s exactly what gives it strength.

But Katie Runnels isn’t just crafting songs. She’s building Imperfect Beauty as a brand, a philosophy, and a movement—spilling into mental health advocacy, body acceptance, and education. It’s easy to be cynical about musicians attaching themselves to “movements,” but this doesn’t feel like marketing. It feels lived-in, drawn from someone who’s lost and rebuilt more than once.

“Imperfect Beauty” isn’t a comeback single. It’s an artist saying: this is what survival sounds like.