Zzzahara Talks About ‘Spiral Your Way Out’

Joe

One name in the Los Angeles music scene that you definitely want to keep your eye on is zzzahara. Their solo music and work with The Simps are fascinatingly melodic and atmospheric indie music with exceptional storytelling. Their upcoming solo album Spiral Your Way Out features brutally honest songwriting, infectious earworm choruses, and hypnotically intriguing guitar riffs, and seamlessly blends bedroom pop, emo, indie rock, and shoegaze. Spiral Your Way Out is set to drop on January 10, 2025.

Musical Tastes Growing Up

Growing up in Highland Park, Los Angeles, zzzahara loved watching live music, learning about cool bands from friends, exploring different musical scenes, and scrolling through websites like Reddit and LimeWire to find niche bands. “I guess that was my escape, just like delving into something I really liked and fixating on it,” they share. “All I sought out was music. It’s funny because I ignored every other art. I didn’t get into museums or film or anything like that. It was the only thing I liked.” Constantly searching for new music shaped their musical knowledge and gave them a sense of community, as it is where they met many of their friends.

Hardcore emo is what zzzahara was really into, but that changed once they started watching skate videos. “I kind of went into listening to indie music through the skate community,” they state. This is how they discovered bands like Broken Social Scene, The Magnetic Fields, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and Tegan and Sara.

Queerness and Gender Identity

Something zzzahara found was lacking in the music they were listening to growing up was LGBTQ+ representation and stories. “I feel like it was more of a heteronormative world,” they comment. “We didn’t really have nonbinary and trans representation. There wasn’t variety. There was not really queer representation in anything.” Despite the lack of representation, they still related to most of the music they listened to. “There wasn’t a lot of queer representation back then, but I feel like I identified with all the straight bands because they were all talking about girls. But now I think it’s kind of cool the trajectory of queer artists like Chappell Roan.”

“I think I learned how to be myself at a really young age,” zzzahara shares. “My parents were OK with me being gay. My Mom said that since I was young, I would dress like a boy, and they would let me. Actually, it’s funny my parents wanted me to get a tuxedo a few weeks ago for like this Sadie Hawkins Born X Raised dance. It was pretty chill. They never judge me. In school, I never really got judged for being gay. It was only in elementary where they would call me a tomboy or a dyke. But then, as I got older, when people would say, ‘You’re a dyke;’ I would be like, ‘OK. So what?’”

“Now, too, I feel like 70% of the population respects my pronouns or actually bothers to ask which I’ll take. It’s better than nothing. I’d rather live in a world where some people accept it, and if other people can’t, that’s their problem or fault. I’m so glad my trajectory happened during queer acceptance. I’m glad to grow up in a generation that’s more accepting and understanding.” When someone misgenders them on social media, they mention that their fanbase will step in. “People sometimes call me she and stuff like that, but then I’ll see a fan or a person who supports me just be like, ‘they’re they/them.’”

Creating Spiral Your Way Out (How it Came to Fruition)

What exactly led to the creation zzzahara’s new album, Spiral Your Way Out? “I think it’s just like engaging in behavior that I wanted,” states zzzahara. “I think I wanted to overcorrect myself so much. Like I have a lot of trauma, but it’s probably more dependent on my socioeconomic status growing up and my environment, and being a person of color, which separates me from the mainstream American world. I feel like now that I’m older, I tried to correct them, like, my whole life just to fit in with society and how I should behave.”

For Spiral Your Way Out, zzzahara also took an introspective and reflective approach to their life but without judging it. “I could just be like sitting down with just like a group of people on a bender for two days straight and go home and make music, and that’s just like my normal life, but I guess I didn’t want that,” they recall. “I wanted to grow out of it. But for Spiral Your Way Out, I think I just leaned into the lifestyle that I led, but I didn’t judge it, so it didn’t make me feel as guilty about my life, so I lived it free. Like, I smoked all the cigarettes I wanted to, went on all the benders I wanted to, and had all the drinks I wanted, and instead of trying to lean into a relationship and think that would fix my life, I didn’t. I wanted to be alone.”

“I feel like that’s what I’ve been practicing now. And Spiral Your Way Out is literally just spiraling, going on benders, and being with whomever I wanted to. I’m still going to therapy, but I’m not obsessing over the fact that it’s gonna make me better. (I’m) just like gradually gonna get better with my own timing and not try to fit into what other people think that I should be or what I should do. I think now, letting things be is my motto. I should just let it be and not judge others and not try to over-judge myself into not fitting into this, like, mode.”

Evolving Their Sound and Learning New Skills

Spiral Your Way Out marks some significant changes for zzzahara. “I think I have evolved from just making music in my room to actually getting more of this bigger sound and working with engineers,” they say. “It feels like such a collaboration with producers rather than just right in my room. It feels like I got to delve into the music cell I like the most: emo. Emo is a guilty pleasure. Growing up, I got to make that music, but in my professional career, that wasn’t what I was known for. It was mostly lo-fi music. So, it feels good to be able to make the switch and kind of do what I want.” Switching to a more collaborative process was an enjoyable experience for them. “With ‘In Your Head,’ when we figured out how the song was going to go, me and Alex [Craig] will be in a session for 10, 11 hours without eating. It’s pretty toxic, but that’s how stoked we are about the song.”

Zzzahara still records music in their bedroom almost every day but wanted to try something new rather than continuing to stay the same for this record, stating, “I like working with effects, working with different plugins, and toying around in my computer, but I feel like that feels like a kid’s workshop for me, which is like cool, ‘cause that’s your creative imagination, but I think I’m more into finding a more solid process rather than just toying around. I feel like a lot of the songs I used to make they’re fun, but I feel like they actually happened by mistake mostly. I wasn’t that great of a musician, but I think I’m honing into actually being technical and skilled now.”

Evolving as a musician has also allowed zzzahara to be more “free” with their approach to music. “Mostly for this album, I freestyled the whole thing with either like the co-writer or co-producer,” they share. “Within the first 10 or 20 minutes, we figure it out. I feel like it comes easier to me now because I’ve been doing it for so long. It’s so embarrassing, but I see videos of when I was like 12 or 13; I would make songs in my room, and they were bad. It’s just, like, constant years of doing that.”

One thing that zzzahara has been enjoying of late is learning different guitar tunings (drop D in particular) and making crazy chords, which they mention is their “emo vibe” shining through. This is evident in “Ghosts,” which features excellent ear-candy guitar riffs and impressive technicality. “The chords are really impactful,” they share. “When I walked in the studio, (the guitar) was already tuned to a tuning I didn’t know, so when I picked up the guitar and played the regular chords, it transcribed them in a different way. It sounded more fit to my voice. That’s why I started messing with different tunings. If you mess with different tunings, your vocals can really stand out.” Another example of growing more technical in their guitar skills in a slightly more subtle way is “NY NY.” “You can barely hear the acoustic guitar. It’s in the background, but it kind of drives the song. That’s, like, one of my favorite riffs.”

Honesty in Songwriting

As with zzzahara’s other records, Spiral Your Way Out features sincere and truthful songwriting from the heart. “I feel like honesty is important in art,” they comment. “I guess it’s cool to have a façade too, but for me, genuine honesty in music is my favorite because music for me, and I mean as well for a lot of people, is therapeutic. So, I feel like its good to just be honest.”

Lyrically, the record is a bit of a departure from their previous releases. “The reason why I wanted to be single for the last year and a half was like, ‘I don’t want to write love songs anymore.’ I want to try and differentiate myself from that. Now I kind of write songs about being happy.” They have also been trying to become a better songwriter too. “I’ve been reading a lot, and I feel like there’s more beautiful ways that things can be said. I’ve been listening to music in Spanish and Russian too ’cause I feel like that lyrical content says beautiful things in simple ways, which is kind of like the goal, and that’s how I try to do it for Spiral Your Way Out: say things in the most simple but effective way.”

Being very honest, open, and vulnerable in music is not an easy thing to do. However, zzzahara finds music helps them better communicate their thoughts and feelings. “I feel like I’m bad at communicating, like every time I have a conversation, I feel like I never get to my point,” they say. “Well, I have ADHD, so I feel like I always miss the mark in most of the things I want to say. So, music is my grand communicator of that in emotion and lyrical content.”

Other News

Along with Spiral Your Way Out, zzzahara has more exciting news to share. “I recently acted in this queer movie. I don’t know when it’s coming out. That was cool. I never acted before.” Diving into acting for the first time ever was not nerve-wracking at all for them, as they continued, “It didn’t make me feel nervous. I was actually giggling all the time on set.”

Concluding Remarks

Zzzahara hopes that Spiral Your Way Out is comforting for listeners. “I hope it helps people through breakup. Whenever I listen to a song, like The Magnetic Fields, “I Don’t Want To Get Over You,” that helps me even though it’s sad. After like I’ve purged out all the sadness with like listening to this track all day, I feel better the next day. I hope it does that.” They are proud of the entire record and look forward to sharing it with fans. “To me, it feels like a ‘record’ record where all the songs sound cool. I hope people bump it as a record, not as singles. I know singles are really popular nowadays, but I want to have at least one good record in my lifetime, if not two.”