If you’re wondering why Avi Kaplan left a group as successful as Pentatonix, the short answer is: sanity. The longer answer involves a spiritual pilgrimage through forests, oceans, and the kind of inner monologue you can only have when hiking solo through Israel.
“I just needed more time for myself,” Kaplan says with the calm of a man who’s found his center and maybe a cabin in the woods to go with it. “I wasn’t able to see my friends or family. I was becoming a shell of myself.”
The result of his departure is I’ll Get By, a soul-stirring Americana EP that feels like it was written with muddy boots, a whittled stick, and a full moon overhead. “A lot of people think this is a departure,” he says, “but this is actually the music I’ve always done.” It’s also the music he finally got to make after stepping off the dizzying hamster wheel of global stardom.
But Kaplan didn’t go straight from the a cappella stage to a banjo in the forest. First, he disappeared. He took a year off to reset—a personal walkabout through Germany, Israel, and eventually, deep into the woods outside Nashville. “It felt like a pilgrimage,” he says. “I grew up near Sequoia National Park, so I’ve always been connected to nature. Reconnecting with that saved me.”
You can hear that clarity across I’ll Get By, most strikingly in opener “Change on the Rise,” a dark, tribal declaration that draws a line in the sand. “I wrote it to get my fire back,” Kaplan explains. “And hopefully help other people do the same.” It’s the kind of anthem that makes you want to walk through a thunderstorm in a cloak and come out a better person.
Then there’s “Full Moon,” which Kaplan wrote long before the rest of the EP. “I don’t really know where that one came from,” he says, marveling at its ethereal, Radiohead-adjacent vibe. It’s a sharp contrast to the EP’s earthy palette, and a sign that Kaplan isn’t looking to be boxed in. “It was important for me to make something eclectic enough that I wouldn’t get stuck in one sound.”
Not that he’s trying to shed all of his past—just the parts that didn’t feel authentic. “People hear handclaps or humming and assume it’s because of Pentatonix,” he says, “but I’ve always loved harmony. Before all this, I was going to be a choral director. I was a music nerd.”
You can hear that reverence for harmony in “Sweet Adeline, Pt. 2,” a song that nods to old barbershop traditions—and yes, he’s aware Elliott Smith got there first. “I hadn’t heard Elliott’s version until after I wrote mine,” he says. “It was cool to hear both.”
Kaplan’s devotion to music nerds doesn’t end with his own writing. For the past seven years, he’s run A Cappella Academy, a summer camp for harmony-obsessed high schoolers. “That might be the thing I’m most proud of,” he says. “I started it because I wish I’d had something like that growing up. A place to be with other kids who were just as obsessed with music as I was.”
It’s hard not to root for Kaplan. He walked away from a juggernaut to find his voice, and what he came back with is quiet, powerful, and unmistakably his. “I wanted to heal,” he says. “And I wanted to get back to the things I love most.”
Mission accomplished. And if he ends up sounding a little more grounded than your average pop star, it’s probably because he lives in the forest, sings to the trees, and doesn’t give a damn about trends.
In other words: he’ll get by.
Listen to the interview above and then check out the videos below.
