Celtic harps until her parents bought her a full-size pedal harp in the seventh grade. After high school, she studied composition and creative writing at Mills College, where she played keyboards in The Pleased. She dropped out, however, in order to focus on her music and returned to live with family in Nevada City. Career 2002–2005: Career beginnings and The Milk-Eyed Mender In 2002–03, after appearing as a guest musician on Nervous Cop's self-titled collaboration album, Newsom recorded two EPs, Walnut Whales and Yarn and Glue. These homemade recordings were intended to serve as a document of her early work and were not intended for public distribution. At the suggestion of Noah Georgeson, her then-boyfriend and recording engineer of the EP, she burned several copies to sell at her early shows. Newsom's friend and bandmate in Golden Shoulders, Adam Kline, gave one of her CDs to Will Oldham at a show in Nevada City. Oldham was impressed with Newsom's music and asked her to tour with him. He also gave a copy of the CD to the owner of Drag City, his record label. Drag City signed Newsom and released her debut album The Milk-Eyed Mender in 2004. Shortly thereafter, Newsom toured with Devendra Banhart and Vetiver to promote the album and made an early UK appearance at the Green Man Festival in Wales. The tour was the subject of the 2011 documentary, The Family Jams. In December 2004, she performed with Smog and Weird War at Drag City's "It's a Wonderful Next Life" Christmas party. She also appeared as a guest musician on Vetiver's 2004 self-titled album, and the following year, on Vashti Bunyan's Lookaftering (2005). The track "Sprout and the Bean" was featured in the 2008 horror film The Strangers. The Milk-Eyed Mender had sold 200,000 copies of as 2010 and helped her garner an underground following. The album was remarked as a "neo-folk benchmark" by music historian John Morrish in 2007 and was named the 12th best folk album of all time by NME. 2006–2011: Ys and Have One on Me Her second album,Ys (/ˈiːs/), was released in November 2006, also by Drag City. The album features orchestrations and arrangements by Van Dyke Parks, engineering from Steve Albini and mixing by Drag City label-mate Jim O'Rourke. On a road trip, Bill Callahan recommended she listen to the album Song Cycle by Parks, which led to him being