Kelsea Ballerini Drops Surprise Short Film and EP ‘Rolling Up the Welcome Mat’

Kelsea Ballerini is gifting fans a Valentine that isn’t wrapped in pretty paper and perfect bows. It’s boxed up in honesty, heartache, and healing.

At midnight on February 14, the singer dropped a surprise six-song EP, titled Rolling Up the Welcome Mat. A 20-minute short film, written and directed by her, accompanied the release, one that appears to reenact the dissolution of her near five-year marriage to fellow country artist Morgan Evans.

“here’s my healing journey,” she shared with fans in an Instagram post. “here’s my heart. here’s my truth. i’ve never been this open, i’ve never been this bold, and i’ve never been this proud of my art. so with love and respect, i’m rolling up the welcome mat. six song story and short film out now. happy valentine’s day.”

View this post on Instagram

The mini-movie and EP are both vulnerable displays of heartbreak and what it looks like to pick up the pieces. “I wasn’t worried about anything other than presenting the songs as honestly as possible,” Ballerini said of the release in a statement. “Most of them started with me and my guitar.

“I was writing by myself for most of the project, and it was nice to trust myself again,” she continued. “The only way I’ve been able to handle my life since I was 12 was to write about it. Ironically, I started writing music because my parents got divorced; that was my therapy. Rolling Up The Welcome Mat was how I processed everything. It’s the way I got my feelings out of my body and heart and put them to music, which is the purest way I could’ve handled it.”

Broken up into song chapters – “Mountain With A View,” “Just Married,” “Penthouse,” “Interlude,” “Blindsided,” “Leave Me Again” – the short film is a brutal, beautiful telling of how Ballerini got to where she is now.

Watch and listen to Rolling Up the Welcome Mat below.

Photo by Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for ABA