rejected affection for years and years And now I have it and damn it, it's kind of weird It tells me I'm pretty Don't know how to respond I tell them that it's pretty too good I say that don't have a clue With every person I surprise myself I'm scared of flies, I'm scared of dies Someone plays a play Cause I think I've fallen in love this time I

blinked

and suddenly I heard a fell in touch Pumb What if he's the last one like keys? What if he's the only one I ever miss? Maybe I should run away twenty-one I don't even know who I want to be called I've lost all control of my heartbeat now But caught in a romance with him somehow I still feel a shock through every blow When I hear and I love you cause And I've got some more to lose The first one to ever like me wrong I am seconds away from all the time How the hell did I fall in love this time And honestly I can't believe I can't take all your mind I blinked and suddenly I heard of the time Cute, he's so

cute, I love that Sorry I didn't chime in on as many harm No, my God, I was so lovely and dainty Dainty, it's so sweet, it's a cute one It's a really sweet one This is definitely one of the songs I look back and I'm like yep, I was definitely twenty-one Yeah, I laid out on that lyric I know I sing that now and I'm like Yup, that was three years ago Yeah, it's

funny right? I think it's great, but also that first love

kind of thing It's just so we've all been there Yeah, you know I sing It's pretty special I think for my young listeners it feels relatable And I think for older listeners even me now being three years older It reminds me of a kind of like a sweet time, innocent time Yeah, I love that So you're in the middle, I met you about three weeks ago I guess we did a show together in Ghent, Brussels Yeah, that was fun It was And since then I feel like you're

going through

a lot That's crazy You're doing really great And I feel like you're kind of, people are getting turned on and you're music really fast I'm trying to not say you're blowing up Because that just sounds obnoxious, but you kind of are Yeah, it's a crazy time, I kind of can't believe it Especially with the kind of music I make and have sought out to make I never ever ever would have dreamed of You know that it would reach kind of people that don't listen to this music normally Or don't have a history of listening to jazz music Which was always the goal, it just is so wild to me Well that's funny because I heard you say you've said a few times That it is kind of your goal to turn younger people on to jazz Yeah, absolutely You very clearly want to do that Yeah, that's kind of like the whole reason I make music I would say But I love that I never thought about music that way personally Yeah I never thought about how or who it should be received by Because I wasn't that forward thinking But I think with the nature of the way you have to make music these days Yeah It makes a lot of sense to have to think about that stuff Yeah, well I grew up playing classical music and jazz music And I went to jazz conservatory for school And to Berkeley To Berkeley, yeah So I have all this formal education behind me For these styles of music that kind of seem like they're only for those who have the formal education Yeah And I love the music so much and I want to make it kind of accessible to all And I think one of the reasons that people believe that These genres of music are dying out a little bit is because it's lost that air of Relatability and accessibility Which jazz music in the beginning was meant to be that It was kind of breaking out of classical forms And I guess in a way of trying to save these styles of music I've gone out to make this kind of music and make it accessible for all But I think that's great because I've heard of other people doing that as well But they are more of a historical route Right You're writing original music and you're not trying to do something old You're just doing what you feel in an original way I think that's why it's being related to so well Thank you, well this generation, they don't really care what the music sounds like Of course they want good music but they want just somebody that they can look to The way I carry myself and the way I go about social media for example And releasing and all that is very pop music The way I go about it is very much a pop-focused career Which I wanted but the second I opened my mouth it's kind of like Valentine It's songs that sound kind of old But because they're written about my current experiences, my modern experiences I think there's some sort of connection there that gets to the new generation I think it's really neat, I'm really really really surprised that it's somehow worked out You know previously when I'd walk around and people would ask me like, oh, you were honestly like one of the kind of my main examples for somebody that could bring music that was less traditional in that sense And bring it to a wider audience, there were such so few examples It was really only you for a while that I had to look up to that So it's really cool to be sitting across, are you talking about this? Yeah, exactly Yeah, but it's such a different world now, it's so different You're like a social media master and you have to be that Yeah, I mean that's the way that I've managed to connect to a young audience Because they're all on social media, I also enjoy it But if you don't enjoy it, people can tell and they won't connect to it as well much Yeah, I'm lucky I enjoy it, it's like, you know, it's not a given to want to do it along with doing music Like they're kind of two separate things that now the industry kind of requires you to do both Yeah, I'm just lucky I enjoy it I was talking to a bunch of friends lately and they're struggling because It's not the artist's brain to be a self promotion, you have to be your own You have to be like a business woman, yeah, exactly You are a business woman and that's what I find so fascinating that you're so on top of it all At a young age, I don't think I really knew my way around stuff at that age Well, maybe by your age I had to, but I mean, did you start out just as a teenager watching TikTok? Was it me on then? No, no, I mean, so I was at Berkeley, I was just a student there and then I was studying cello And yeah, well, we got sent home because of the pandemic So I went home and I had just a couple of weeks or so I thought of break because of COVID And I just said to myself, you know, I'm gonna post little videos on myself online playing jazz standards and songs that I've written that sound like jazz songs and just kind of, that was my challenge to try to write as much as possible and post as much as possible and I actually didn't even have TikTok at that point I remember my sister came, I have a twin sister She and her friends had been watching TikTok and she went to university in Scotland And I remember my sister was like, you know, you should get on TikTok, like there are a lot of singers on here And I remember rolling my eyes and it'd be like, this is so stupid, like this is not for me at all Like I'm never going to like get into that, this is for children, you know? And then, of course, like everyone else, I kind of got sucked in And I think I posted one video of myself singing, I wish you love and I'm like accompanying on cello Yeah, and it just kind of immediately caught into the algorithm or something And all of a sudden, I had all these young people commenting on it being like, oh my god, like this sounds like something out of a movie or reminds me of my grandparents or something And it was really then that it kind of clicked in my brain that my generation had a hunger and understanding of this kind of music It just hadn't been presented to them yet So I kind of, you know, after that video kind of jumped on the train and kept on doing that It was kind of a perfect storm of events, I had my first song set to release the third week of the pandemic Just, it was just for fun, like I literally uploaded it onto like tunecore or whatever, myself Yeah, it's all just snowballed from there, it was all just a really lucky, lucky kind of string of events But social media is definitely the reason that, you know, I'm not sitting in my bedroom in Iceland And got to move to LA, so I have, you know, as much as artists are inclined to hate on social media, I'm very thankful for where it's brought me And it's given me a lot of control and leverage kind of as an artist myself to run my own business exactly the way I want to And that's what you're doing And that's what you're doing Yeah, and release exactly the kind of music I want to, like nobody's ever, like when I wanted to release Valentine, you know Not a single person was like, hey, you know, I don't know if Gen Z is gonna like a jazz song like that, you know Nobody ever thought that, because I had already posted it on TikTok and it had already, you know, shown that it was, that there was interest there It's pretty cool, you can take control like that and once you're in the machine and people are excited It's just connection with other people Yeah, it is,

oop, it is, it

is this like direct line of communication that I have with my audience And that helps me so much as an artist to know what they want Like obviously I make music for myself first and foremost, but I also have, you know, an audience and I listen to them And it's really neat to have that direct line of communication and so fun to like respond to fans and like respond to DMs I'm never expecting it, so... Yeah, they excited Get so excited, I still remember like, yeah, I was only about three years ago, I remember I posted a video of myself like from a practice room at Berkeley Singing down by Emily King and playing along and she commented on the video or shared it or something And I remember I had to like take myself out of class, like I had to see myself out because I was like so nervous and so excited And I like remember like standing in the hallway hyperventilating because I was so excited that like Emily King had commented on my video And it encouraged me so much to like continue and I now have that power which is the coolest thing in the world So, you know, whenever I see a cover or of one of my songs that a fan has made or you know a nice DM And I just if I have a moment I respond because maybe one day I won't be able to and yeah But until that day I'm going to engage as much as I can And because you remember how that felt? Yeah, I remember so well, there's like a couple of artists who are now my friends even that I like did covers of their songs And I was like freaking out, it's like... That's so sweet That's so cool, like I can in one second like make someone's week or year It's crazy, right? It's what connects us all Yeah, it's so crazy, so I mean I'm sure you feel that power too like when people come to you And you know tell you how much your music has meant to them or what they've done It's wild how that happens I could learn a lot from you on social media I'll say that Running your own show being such a good business person also you're on a label But it's kind of self run, is that what's the label you're on? Oh, my label is called A-Wall and they're really really great and have been so supportive And they support all my projects and they kind of let me release whatever music I want And I have like full creative control and yeah it's like a really really like best case scenario It's like all these things that at least at Berkeley you know people are always talking about Like if you're with a label like you don't get to make your own decisions and stuff like that And my experience has been entirely the opposite But are they a typical label or they're? I mean I would say so, there's not really anything they do that other labels don't do But

they're not, are they a major

label? They're not considered a major label But I believe they're under Sony now Oh gotcha gotcha, that's great Yeah I own my masters and own my publishing and it's cool We have it like I didn't know what that meant when I was rich You know what I mean? Yeah it's well I mean there's so much transparency in social media now And like obviously with Taylor Swift you know speaking so much about it And re recording all of her older albums It's like it's very kind of at the forefront of a lot of young artists minds now And it's been empowering because it educates you all Yeah As to what the business is behind the scenes of business Yeah absolutely I remember when I signed my record deal It was not for a ton of money and we did 14 songs for the first album And I had a publishing deal like in the works But I only wrote two and a half songs on my first album It was a few covers and a lot of songs from my band members at the time I was a new songwriter but we get close, we start pressing the records And it comes out that I didn't understand any of this at the time Until after the fact The label only pays 75% of the publishing per song So you have to get every publisher to agree to that But of course it's favored nations which I didn't know anything about And so if one person doesn't agree then nobody agrees to it And also the label only paid for 11 songs on an album So here I had 14 songs out of pocket for 3 I was going to be way out of pocket for 3 songs plus the extra 25% of each song If that makes sense, quick math, right? But it was too late to go back because everything had been pressed and finalized So this all kind of came out at the end right before the album came out And I panicked a little and then for so now I'm like okay, ever since then I was very, you know, I learned my lesson is what I'm saying But just little things like that that you don't think about No, I mean I've had my own version of that too, you know, like you kind of don't It is odd, you know, in the beginning especially for young artists Like you really don't know anything about the music industry and it is so so confusing Like I'm still learning so much every single day I always tell people like I got my master's degree in music business for my manager Because he's like still to this day like teaching me everything like there is to know And there is so much to know but like my first few songs I had no clue about any of that stuff I was just lucky that I had my manager swoop in and kind of like helped me take care of it That's good, I mean, yeah, you need people to help you through it But also it's great to know that you're wise to the most of the stuff I'm like very careful, well I remember like at Berkeley like in music business classes that we would take Like my main takeaway was like don't like be careful before you sign anything Yeah, make sure you have a lawyer and whatever so like I remember, you know, when I first started getting phone calls and emails from labels And managers and stuff like that, I was like, okay, slow down I took all the meetings but I refused to sign anything until I had like a manager and a lawyer It was good, so it was like this puzzle piece, I remember the first few months of doing this I was very confused because I really needed help but I also wanted to make sure it was the right people helping me So I kind of walked around blindly for a bit but it was all worth it That's great, would you ever consider signing a big deal and losing control of your masters? Is that something that's crossed your mind? I think it would have to be for a lot of money Exactly, yeah, a lot of money I think hopefully I'm in the position now where like I don't think anybody would be, you know, crossing me and telling me what to do and what not to do, I think people realize that I'm very strong minded and know what I want musically But yeah, I'd have to, for a lot of money to give out my master Yeah, it wouldn't be a quick decision, it wouldn't be a quick decision, no, it would be a group decision too I love that everybody knows what that means now, because of Taylor Swift's Yeah, no, I know, it's funny, she's not the only one but like it's pretty big thing It's brought on so much transparency in the music industry and you know kids are walking a little less blind into these like big scary meetings Yeah, well good, I'm glad, I'm glad you're smart It's, I have a good team I will say, after I released this song somebody commented It's so Nora Joan Really? Yeah, that's

funny, I actually don't think so, I think it's

so you I just remember that, so I used to do that It's

so nice

It's a nice piano, right? I'm glad you're going to play piano I know, I'm really dancing around all the instruments now I'm excited, you're going to play piano I'm so excited to have the world on it, that's such a good call Cool,

did you study classical piano also? Mm-hmm, so

cello and piano, yeah, classical, growing up, yeah, intensely Very intensely, your mother's a violinist? Mm-hmm, she's a violinist, yeah, my grandparents were also a violinist and a pianist Oh wow, and your sister is a violinist? She's a violinist, yeah, she plays on a lot of my recordings That's cool, anyone else musical?

No, just,

yeah, where did the jazz come from? My dad really liked jazz music, so he played a lot of jazz music And I think, for me, when I started singing, I always had a dark, low, deep voice And I could resonate with Ella Fitzgerald, and of course my voice is not nearly like theirs But I had that darker quality to them And the recordings with the big string ensembles and stuff I could relate to that, it felt like a middle world between classical music and something new, something newer So I kind of, that's how I fell in love with jazz And that was the only music I really sang, like there's a video You never sang classical? No, you know, I don't love classical singing that much Maybe I'm exposing myself I might come around, I might come around I love Maria Callus Okay, there's one recording of Maria Callus singing Samson and Delilah It's like one of the most beautiful songs in the world We had a lot of heart Yeah, that I will say Cool, I love the song This is a deep song, I mean, it's It is a deep song You know, we were talking about Valentine and being young Yeah, and all the relatable first This one feels old, it's really mature a bit Yeah, my songwriting and experiences have matured a bit I love this one, I'm glad we're gonna do it

I'm