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If you prefer your music to be a heavy predawn fog, romantic in that vampiric way, a lustful lullaby to take you to the afters and let the excess fade, we have the soundtrack for you. zekiizo generally, and on her latest single "kiss" specifically, is the exact sonic syringe needed to extract every note from the last fringes of the night. We were immediately enamored by the moody world building and art direction of the NYC-based artist, whose multi-dimensional & disciplinary approach has the effect of a cultural succubus, infusing our most brooding fears into the cadence of downtempo pop. Wanting to learn more from this amorphous talent, we sat down with her in NYC, and here are the heady results:

OnesToWatch: Why are you an artist? 


zekiizo: I am an artist because I have a strong need to express myself. I'm a more reserved type of person, and when I started making music, it was a way of just expressing exactly what I felt. Earlier in my career, I started making music really just to have kind of like a diary of things, and I wouldn't even share it. I just looked back at it so that I could understand what I was going through, and I think music is really powerful in that way. I could reference things with sounds and lyrics. 


Love that. What was it that you were going through that made you go, I gotta fire up Garageband and get this out of me? 


I think when I was a teen, I was going through a lot of identity issues, trying to figure out who I was. I am adopted, so both my parents are not Chinese. I'm sure a lot of people deal with that at a young age. I'm still dealing with it now, you know? 
But I definitely think that when you're a teenager, at that time, everything is very potent, you know? Everything's so powerful. Relationships, friendships, all that stuff. 
But now it's a lot more about discovering, sonically, what I am and who I am as a person and putting that into an audio form. 

I love that. There is that element of nature versus nurture in the lives of adopted people, which must be interesting to go through. As someone who's gone through that experience, what do you think has affected you more, just who you were by origin or your upbringing? 


Honestly, I think having multiple identities has always been something that has been interesting for me. My dad is French, my mom is Southern from Mississippi, and I'm Chinese. So, as a household, we have different vibes going on. People ask me where I’m from, and it throws them off that I speak French. It's a superpower too. But it’s a process, figuring out what I consider myself… am I French American, Chinese American, or all three? 

When did you start writing music? 


I started writing when I was like 15. I started on ukulele, guitar, and piano. I took piano lessons when I was younger. 
Lots of singer songwriter stuff. I remember I was really into Grace VanderWaal. 

She kicked off a generation. Was anything else competing as an outlet? 

I did a lot of painting. I was doing some painting on wood for a while, boxes and stuff. That was really fun. 


Did you do the carpentry as well, or did you just find the boxes? 

Sometimes I try to put them together. I mean, I'm not a carpenter, but I'm a big believer in the fact that you don't need to be like a professional to just try.
So I was doing a lot of visual work at the time, too. 

Love that. Do you have a songwriting process, now that you’ve been writing for some time? Do you start with a melody, top line, idea? 


I will always almost always start with production. So I'll always come up with a rough demo of a beat, some chords or a synth and a bassline, a rhythmic backbone first. 

I can detect the foundation of percussion in your music. Why do you think that resonates so much with you? 

It sets the tone. If you want something menacing, the beat reflects that first, or if you want it more laid back, it all really falls back to percussion, in my opinion. 

I love that you used the word menacing. One of the reasons I gravitated to your music was that dark factor – there isn’t that much pop music that falls into the same emotions, it’s more of a standard for death metal or the adjacent. But to infuse pop music with that ominous factor, with the beautiful tonality and rhythm, it gives it a cinematic flair… like there’s about to be a jump scare. Do you just love horror movies? 

I love horror movies, actually. It's my favorite genre. I just really like darker things. A lot of my inspiration – musical or art – it's all darker stuff. 

I couldn't help but notice that your art direction is so excellent, it’s very cohesive. 

Thank you. 

There’s a very mysterious sort of plot line arcing through the visuals, which definitely plays off of the tone of your music. What's the origin of the visuals? 

It's interesting because I think of zekiizo, my artist name, as almost an alter ego for me as a person. And I guess my alter ego is kind of menacing in a way, you know? 

If you weren't zekiizo, if you weren't doing this, what would you be doing? Would you be a contract assassin? Or would you be an accountant? Where would you put all of this alter ego energy? 

That's actually a really good question. I'm going to be so honest, I don't like working for other people. For a while I used to do visuals and creative stuff for other artists, but then I realized it was just what I would want to do for myself, but I was doing it for other people, and it didn’t translate. So I don't know. 

You mentioned not having a lot of people working with you. Are you doing everything in the process?

I produce everything, but for the song, “Kiss,” I co-produced that. It's the first time I've worked with a producer before. 

How was that? 


It was good. He had sent me a beat, I liked it, and I made a lot of changes to it to fit what I wanted it to sound like. It was really great. I want to be more collaborative, and I definitely want to get more live instruments into the music. So that would mean more collaborations. 

Something I’ve been asking producers is about the lack of representation of non-men in the production space. What are your thoughts on that, and was there any motivation there for you self-producing? 

It's a superpower to enter a field that doesn’t hold as much representation for you. There are a lot of wonderful female producers that I look up to. They definitely don’t receive as much mainstream attention as male producers. I felt even more of a reason to dive in, but it was never really from an intention of balancing things. But it is frustrating how most of the producers looking to collaborate with me are male. So for me, it's just been a superpower to dive more into the making of my music, and own that identity. I love the idea of being a self produced artist. 

You mentioned admiring some female producers. Anyone on your dream collaboration list? 

Well, I really love 070 Shake, for sure. I love Earth Eater. I love Boy Harsher. There's one. 
Oh. These are also artists in themselves. Soho Dolls.

These are awesome. I love the way that female electronic producers are taking off. 

It's amazing. 

If everything works out the way you want it to with your upcoming project, what does that look like for you? 

It depends a lot on who it's reaching. I think that if it reaches people in the way I hope it does, that means it means something to someone else. “Kiss” is a little bit more upbeat and poppy for my music, and I'm definitely wanting to show, as an artist, that I can make more feel good music, too. 

How did you land on that new sound? Was it just an attempt to push your genre boundaries?

Because I worked with a co-producer and kind of let new blood in, I think that made it different. But it’s still me. I would never put anything out that's not me, you know? 

Yeah, it's powerful. Do you have any inspirations outside of music, circling back to your visuals, especially on social media? 

I love David Lynch. I love Laurie Anderson. Laurie Anderson is one of my top artists of all time. Obviously, my music is very different from hers, but all of her visuals that she was doing with her albums and music videos, for a while, I really loved. Yoko Ono. So wonderful. And it’s not just the visuals, it’s the energy and the space they take up in their fields. 

That’s an amazing variety. Where did you find that depth of music and film TV history? 

Well, my parents are very creative folk too, so they did put me on a little bit.
I would say that most of my visual identity and creative exploration culminated when I was in Paris. I moved to Paris when I was 17 and I was there for two and a half years, so, moments of intense growth came out of it. It also is a David Lynch-obsessed country. 

When Lost Highway came out, I felt like that movie ended up as a medium in so many different artists and band projects because it was just such a powerful visual, so it's nice to know that it still resonates 20 plus years later. Pivoting to hopefully some more fun questions. If a bunch of your friends came over hungry, do you have a dish you’d whip up to feed everyone? 

If it's a late night, I'm not going to do a whole feast.
I love Shin ramen. It's a go-to staple ramen for me. Gotta put an egg in, maybe some tofu. 

Is there a venue or a place that, if everything worked out, you'd love to perform at? 

This is going to sound cheesy, but there's a venue in Boston called The Sinclair. I'm from Boston and it's a hometown staple. It's not like a giant place, but it's not a tiny space either. I'd love to headline that. 

If you could go back in time and perform with any artist, who would you love to perform with? 

Honestly, Laurie Anderson. During her bright red era, which is an album she came out with. She's still around doing awesome stuff now, but that era is just fantastic. 

Any horror movies you'd recommend, if there could be one movie to understand your music project? 

The TV series Twilight Zone. Then maybe like a more typical horror movie, like
Sinister. It's just really solid and has everything that I would want. Wait, I was wrong… Midsommar or Hereditary. 

What made those ones stand out for you? 


I mean, they're just fantastic. Or Mother. They're just like chilling in a non-horror way, but still extremely intentional. They're psychological thrillers. There is some gore, obviously, but I think they’re in the experimental wave of mainstream horror movies. 

If you could put yourself five, ten years from now, you've already headlined to Sinclair, you've already done the works of being an artist. Are you still doing music? 
Are you one of those people that maybe moves on to something else creatively? I know you have talents besides just music, but, do you have a dream goal? 


A dream goal is that I would always be doing music. I'd love to tour at some point. Maybe being a creative director for my own brand. 

A couple more fun questions. If you could go into any time period on Earth, do you have a time period where you feel you’d fit in? 

Either the '50s, which has its issues, or even the 1920s. Gatsby era. 

Why the 1950s? 


Well, I think that for some reason, the 1950s is always like a point of reference for so many things in the media now. And it's interesting because it was also a really hard time for a lot of folks, women, people of color. And so I just think maybe I could reclaim it as something else. 
But then, I’m also a bit of a traditional person in some senses of the American dream, I guess. 

What about the Great Gatsby era?

I love the glitz and glamour… for the rich folk. I've been to a few mansions and homes in Newport from that time period, and it's just insane. Such beautiful architecture, so grand. Nothing I would really want to live in now, but it would be fantastic to go to a party and see how people speak, talk, dance. 


Are you reading anything lately? 

I’ve been reading Nick Cave’s “Faithful Carnage” for the third time. He is one of my favorite artists too. He's a huge, huge inspiration to me, not necessarily because I make music like him, but just everything about him is fascinating to me. 


At OnesToWatch, we love when artists put us on to other artists. Could you give us any recommendations of artists on the rise that we should be looking out for? 

Poison Girlfriend. Incredible woman. She's Japanese and now lives in Paris. I'm surprised she's not really well known in my generation of people right now, because it's like a lot of the stuff people my age enjoy.

What should we be on the lookout for from you? 

I have quite a few songs coming up. “Kiss” is coming out soon, and another after. Look out. 

Amazing, we can’t wait!