Okay Kaya – the project of Norwegian-born, New York-based Kaya Wilkins – announces Watch This Liquid Pour Itself, her new album and Jagjaguwar debut out January 24th, and presents a new single/video, “Baby Little Tween.” Watch This Liquid Pour Itself is filled with images of pools of sweat, oceans, and other forms of wetness. In these images, Kaya swims through her melancholy and anxiety—not as a way of cleansing herself, but as a channel for reaching their true depths. Throughout the fifteen songs, Okay Kaya listens, responds, and takes a deep breath before she dives in.
Kaya has been playing music since she was a tween, learning songs on her acoustic guitar and listening to Cody Chesnutt (even playing in a black metal project). Her music and artistic process has a cyclical nature, like water circling a drain. Reacting — whether physically on set, or alone with her guitar — has become an integral part of her writing. Kaya’s lyrics encompass a vulnerability and playfulness that allow for unlikely juxtapositions. Her interest in parodying certain elements of pop songs allows her to showcase her humorous side, but it’s important to her that the songs remain vulnerable enough to connect with an audience. In these multi-layered lyrical approaches, the songs take on new meanings depending on who is listening.
Collaboration is central to Kaya’s creative process. Although she remains at the centre of her artistic process, and recorded most of Watch This Liquid Pour Itself herself, she also collaborated with producers Jacob Portrait (UMO, Whitney, (Sandy) Alex G) and John Carroll Kirby (Solange, Kali Uchis) to fully realise her ideas for how this record should sound. Each of the music videos for the new record are co-directed by Kaya and Adinah Dancyger, and were shot respectively in Germany, Japan, Norway, and New York.
In the video for “Baby Little Tween,” Kaya skis down a Japanese mountain with a representation of herself attached to her body, a distorted, toy-like resemblance. On the track, she sings, “I used to fight the feeling, always let it win”; even if moments of defeat have overcome Kaya in the past, she signifies that she is now ready to face those moments and turn them into songs.
Watch This Liquid Pour Itself Tracklist:
1. Baby Little Tween
2. Ascend and Try Again
3. Insert Generic Name
4. Overstimulated
5. Psych Ward
6. Guttural Sounds
7. Asexual Wellbeing
8. Popcorn Heart
9. Mother Nature’s Bitch
10. Hallelu Ya Hellelu Me
11. Symbiosis
12. Givenuptitis
13. Helsevesen
14. Stonethrow
15. Zero Interaction Ramen Bar
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