The Pairs with Micki Balder

About The Pairs

The Pairs are Noelle Frances Coughlin, Renée Coughlin, and Hillary Watson. Powered by soaring sister harmonies, this quirky trio’s unbottled chemistry quickly connects them to their audience. With three distinct lead singer/songwriters, The Pairs offer a unique blend of music with stories of life’s hope, hilarity, and hardship. These classically trained vocalists blur the line between the stage and the crowd as if we’ve pulled up a seat around their family’s lively kitchen table. This award-winning group has been touring internationally in Canada, the USA, and Europe since 2022 and released their third studio album titled, “When Will We Find Our Way?” on October 13th 2023.

We often joke about how The Pairs started as three friends coming together to play music that soothed our achy hearts. It was our own little form of group therapy that has since changed our lives for the better and continues expanding to include more and more people like you.

As we share this experience with one another, we’re learning to have the courage to voice how it is we truly feel, and this in turn creates an opportunity to connect with those that might feel the same way. We start to build a new way of looking at the world within us and the world around us, and together we imagine new possibilities for what the future might look like.

We’ve all been handed stories and ideas about ourselves from the day we were born. We’re bombarded with messages about who we ought to be, how we should or shouldn’t expect to be treated, and how we are supposed to show up to the world around us. We’re made to believe that truth is finite, binary, and absolute, while taught to remove the nuance and complexity from our existence.

Our latest album is a collection of songs that engage with our own experiences of unraveling and rebuilding. These songs share our own encounters with unmet expectations in life and love. Not only romantic love but the love we hold for ourselves. It’s about learning how to embrace the parts of our identities that our culture has shamed us into ignoring and how to honestly look at how we contribute to the ongoing problems that are faced by people within and outside of our communities. We strive to encounter it all with an open heart, ready to feel the grief that comes from letting go of a life we thought we knew and choosing to move forward in a more meaningful and liberating way.

For us, singing our songs can feel like shaking off the parts of ourselves we no longer wish to carry – the shame, the avoidance, the self-ridicule – and while choosing a path different from where we’ve been before is uncertain and precarious at times, it feels empowering to publicly share who it is we wish to become.

We hope that our music and live shows can engage people in optimistic and meaningful conversations about making real change within ourselves. By trusting that there is more than one way to live our lives, we can better show up for the demands of the world around us and better support our communities. It’s about rethinking our purpose as humans and cultivating a more vibrant and expansive way of being together on and with this planet we all call home.

About Micki Balder

Denver-based singer-songwriter Micki Balder explains your feelings and experiences using the words you couldn’t find. With tender vocals and subtle fingerpicking reminiscent of First Aid Kid and the Weepies, she tells musical tales of bittersweet stories, budding love, and heartbreak, bringing her listeners together to participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world.