Photo by Ben Stas
Ryan Walsh
Ryan Walsh (COM’01) of West Roxbury, Mass., is a guitarist and lead singer of Hallelujah the Hills, a beloved Boston indie rock outfit: Joseph Marrett (in front, from left), Ryan, Brian Rutledge, and Nicholas Ward; Ryan Connelly (seated to the left of the piano) and David Michael Curry (behind him). In June, they released DECK, a visual album in the form of 52 songs on two discs that correspond to a hand-designed deck of playing cards. Ryan wrote and performed all the songs and designed the deck himself. Upon its release, Boston magazine dubbed DECK its album of the year for 2025, while the Boston Globe called it “the band’s most daring and imaginative undertaking yet.” Learn more at www.hallelujahthehills.com/music. Ryan is the author of Astral Weeks: A Secret History of 1968 (Penguin), named a best book of 2018 by Amazon, Pitchfork, Billboard, the New York Times, and more than a dozen other outlets.
From the Fall 2025 issue.