With a musician for a father, Winnipeg indie-folk and garage rock musician and songwriter Adam Yarish was practically born into music. “[My father] taught me how to play guitar and piano when I was young, [and that] got me started,” Yarish recalled.
While it did not initially spark his interest, Yarish began pursuing music more seriously as a teenager, drawing inspiration from bands that he grew up with, such as The Beatles and Arctic Monkeys.
Yarish has since been active in the Winnipeg music scene for some time. He is most known as a member of the rock band The Love Letters, where he plays rhythm guitar and keyboards. With The Love Letters, he has been able to perform numerous memorable shows.
“[We played] Festival [du Voyageur] for the past couple years. Our past show about a couple weeks ago was one of my favourite shows we’ve done. It was just a really good crowd and really good energy,” he said. “We [also] had some cool shows opening for bigger bands, like Attica Riots at the Park Theatre and Apollo Suns at the Good Will [Social Club].”
Yarish began to venture into solo projects last year with the release of his debut solo single, “Toilet Wall Graffiti,” in December 2025. The release was promoted with a show at Park Alleys, the first time he had played the song live with a full band.
Yarish’s second solo single, “Shelly, you see,” is set to be released on March 13. The song was inspired by a boss at a former job talking about his high school sweetheart, whose name was Shelly.
“He fully zoned out for a minute, it seemed,” Yarish explained. “When people kept talking, he was just kind of staring into space. I was like, ‘Oh, he’s thinking about Shelly.’ So that just became a funny little running joke with some of my friends, where if [one of us was] falling for someone, it’s like, ‘Oh, you’re thinking about Shelly.’”
The story inspired the idea of a love song, with Yarish using “Shelly” to refer to the person one has feelings for. He began writing the song a few years ago, but it was then shelved until a year ago when writing music with Joe Lezak and Nathaniel Muir, his roommates and bandmates in The Love Letters.
“We were just working on writing some stuff and I had [“Shelly, you see”], and I brought it up and we jammed it for a bit and they helped me finish it […] because it was all there, but I just hadn’t really locked it in and decided for sure, ‘This is it,’” he said.
When asked to describe the song, Yarish said that it has a darker sound than most love songs, which he felt reflected the scary feeling of falling in love.
“An idea that is present in the song that I’ve always related to is [that] it’s kind of scary to feel that strongly about someone, to feel that type of love where you don’t know what’s happening to you,” he explained. “I can’t say I was consciously thinking about it when working on the song, but looking back at it in hindsight […] I think that feeling comes across a little bit in the lyrics and the sound.”
Yarish, also a filmmaker, is planning a music video for the song. Hoping to use his solo music videos as experimental opportunities, he plans to use a 360-degree camera for the video, planned for release before the end of March. He hopes to release further solo singles throughout the year alongside continued performances with The Love Letters.
Adam Yarish’s second single, “Shelly, you see,” will be released on March 13. For more information, follow
@adamyarish. Additionally, Yarish will perform with The Love Letters on March 21 at The Osborne Taphouse and March 27 at The Handsome Daughter alongside Banana Crisis and Empaths in Retrograde. For more information, follow @lovelettersband or visit theloveletters.ca.
