Check out the song “Honest” by Tessa Dalton. A catchy, simple, to-the-point song—I’m just being honest (no pun intended).

Two of her upcoming singles, “Honest” and “You See Me,” were selected among nearly 14,000 entries as semifinalists in the 2023 International Songwriting Contest.

“Honest” is an indie pop/rock song about a girl questioning whether a relationship has just been a placeholder. Dalton notes, “You get to that point in a relationship when you want to know whether it’s going somewhere. You talk, you spend time together, you become friends, but was the time worth it? Did the words have meaning? The truth is that most relationships don’t work out, and sometimes you have to be honest about that.”

Dalton is a 19-year-old fiddler, multi-instrumentalist, and aspiring singer-songwriter. She grew up in rural Idaho and is now based in Nashville, studying commercial music at Belmont University.