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Have you ever watched a sci-fi movie or an anime that had a character death in it? What was the music like in the background? Well for me, it sounds exactly like the opening to willoh’s new EP BUCK. 

willoh, the 20-year old from Springfield, Missouri spent 2026 working through identity, desire, and the uncertainty of living between being a teenager and whatever comes next. If there’s any takeaways from this EP, perhaps the biggest one is that trying to box in willoh is a losing game. That, and that her sound has shifted with her throughout the years.

This project brings to life this droning, almost grueling tension that’s restless and feels like staying up all night to do a research paper you put off until the last minute while you’re going to community college in the next town over from you. This EP kicks off with “OMNICHORD,” a 1:56 vocoded transmission that opens in the middle of a conversation and sounds like it’s reaching you from the darkest and scariest void you could imagine. The track is kind of like walking home at night, all alone, and you see a figure waiting for you in the dark. It's scary, sure but you’re also intrigued to learn more and almost want to catch it. 

Following that haunting introduction, “HARSH” brings you into the world of a sharp, seemingly more focused willoh. It’s a track that reminds me of everything I love about artists like underscores and Ninajirachi. Boasting all of these eclectic little noises taped together by a rhythmic drum track in the background, willoh comes in with these vocoded, soaked vocals that are simple yet taper you into her world even more gradually as the track goes on bleeding into “MONTREAL” that pushes even deeper into this unpredictable digital, sonic world she’s been building one click of the drum machine at a time.  

Remember that movie Wreck-It Ralph? with that character Vanellope Von Schweetz in it? Remember how she was a glitch, and didn’t really belong in the world of that candy racing whatever we were in (or so we thought I won’t spoil it), and no before you ask I’m not too cool to remember the name of the game she was in (it was Sugar Rush) but I just don’t want to stray too far into this metaphor I’m trying to make. The glitchy nature of this whole project makes me think of Vanellope, and I really think she would love “CU” as it drifts between confidence and self-doubt before collapsing in on itself into this glitchy breakdown. 

What I love most about this EP is that it kind of ends up like Vanellope at the end of the movie anyway, it’s imperfect sure but better for it. The glitch isn’t a flaw or something that makes this record less or worse somehow, the glitchiness is actually its superpower. We see that a lot with artists lately, like Ninajirachi’s I Love My Computer, those seemingly imperfect features are actually what make this project so great. The rough edges, the stutters, the double backs, they’re the language of the record that willoh never smooths over or tries to correct. BUCK is the sound of willoh letting her voice dissolve into the machinery whenever she wants, and does this EP sound a little broken and unfinished? Yes. But doesn’t being twenty feel like that anyway? 

willoh says BUCK is the most honest she’s ever been in her music, and that it manifests the part of ourselves we hate and hunts us down until we accept it. That makes the EP’s opening feel less like a scary movie and more like a chase to acceptance. That figure in the dark from “OMNICHORD” isn’t a stranger, it’s actually willoh, and by the end of this EP you won’t want to run from it anymore, but feel a sense of acceptance yourself. 

It also helps that she built all of this herself too. willoh writes, records, and produces everything from her home in Springfield. She started on GarageBand, then moved up to Logic Pro with money from long shifts at McDonald’s. You can hear that bedroom-built world all over BUCK, but it never sounds small. IF anything, it sounds like someone who got to decide exactly how strange she wanted to be, and went for it. 

At the end of the day, BUCK is an EP about becoming yourself without pretending you’ve got it all figured out. It’s messy, contradictory, even a little bit scary, and it’s better for all of it. If this is what willoh sounds like at 20, I can’t wait to hear what’s next. 

Listen to BUCK below: