New finds mixed with old loves, this month’s ‘Music We Like’ is a tribute to spring and transcendence. Thank you to our previous Music Director, KnewJack, for helping spearhead these pieces and inspiring this series to continue. Below you can find the MWL playlist and KHOL’s Zoe Curran’s thoughts on a few standouts. Enjoy!
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‘choke enough’ – Oklou
(Photos by Gil Gharbi / Artwork by Zoe Curran)
I first heard Oklou in February on her NTS Session video. In the middle of a functioning ice rink, Oklou performed three tracks off her most recent release, “choke enough”, while ice skaters whirled around her. One of these skaters would hold up a sign to mark each new track. The lighting is harsh, industrial. The camera pans in and out and sometimes the screen is disconcertingly split into four, showcasing stark, empty stands. Gil Gharbi, the album’s visual director, takes inspiration from the films “Ghost in the Shell” and “Blade Runner” to create a dark, nostalgic world. But the music is stunning, warm. The eleven-minute performance drew me into the mind of Oklou, and I needed more.
French singer, producer and DJ Marylou Mayneil, aka Oklou, created an absolute wallop of a debut studio album with ‘choke enough.’ Previously released singles and collaborations have landed her in the genre realm of hyperpop and dream pop. Hyperpop, popularized by artists such as Sophie, A.G. Cook, Charli XCX and 100 Gecs, is often associated with abrasiveness and intensity. It’s deeply rooted in experimental sound, or noise, rather, and pushing the limits of music technology. It’s not for everyone. This album feels like hyperpop’s daydreaming cousin.
Despite its dreamy nature, Oklou says this album is the most firmly rooted in her everyday life. In an interview with Stereo Gum, she describes the exhaustion of her previous creative process: disconnecting from herself to try and create and reconnecting with herself to be present in her life. That, she said, was unsustainable. “choke enough” attempts to reconcile these moments of disconnection, balancing a fantastical, whimsical sonic landscape a fairy nymph would love with lyrics rooted in her everyday experiences.
Pro tip? Listen to ‘choke enough’ on a loop. As Oklou claims, loops are the closest we can get to perfection.
‘Magician’ – Jimothy Lacoste
(Artwork by Zoe Curran)
Does anyone know who Jimothy Lacoste is? Do we need to?
Camden-born Timothy Gonzalez, better known as ‘Jimothy Lacoste’, exploded onto the internet music scene in 2018 at just 16 years old. A self-described internet kid, he began creating comedic music videos for his lo-fi rap. The videos took the internet by storm. Fame, a record deal and money soon followed. And then suddenly, he disappeared from the scene.
That is, until he started inconspicuously dropping music, and off-kilter music videos, on his Instagram in late 2024. A “fashionable” outfit, questionable dance moves and two odd background characters enraptured me. It was all very… head-tilting. I was interested in his style, but couldn’t discern if I liked his music. It’s not traditionally “clean” production. He’s not a great singer or rapper. His music isn’t parody exactly (or maybe it is?), but it has the tongue-in-cheek energy of Weird Al Yankovic or The Lonely Island. With each listen, however, I became more of a believer in the Jimothy Lacoste sound. It’s house, it’s dark wave, it’s pop, it’s rap. While his intent may be up for debate, his musical vision is not. This time around, he’s just doing what he wants. He focused on his art.
Life is getting quite exciting!
‘Anthem’ – 44 Mist
(Photo from Alfa Mist and Richard Spaven / Artwork by Zoe Curran)
Fusion and fission: This album is your education in collaboration and improvisation.
You don’t have to know anything about jazz to be carried away. Rich on the first encounter, the debut collaboration between jazz musicians Alfa Mist and Richard Spaven grows richer with each listen. Mist is a London-born pianist, a master in intricate improvisation. Spaven is a drummer forged in the U.K. club and hip-hop scene, a human metronome. In interviews, the duo’s dynamic feels a bit stilted until they start playing. All awkwardness melts away, all communication is instrumental.
A moody bassline. A precise percussive backbone. Grame Blevins on the flute. I am listening to this track as I write, furiously bopping my head. I am completely focused on everything “Anthem” is trying to tell me.
Don’t skip the flow of this track into Gianni Brezzo’s “Bapha / зима.” Prepare to ascend.
‘Here is Someone’ – Japanese Breakfast
(Photo by Pak Bae / Artwork by Zoe Curran)
My freshman year of college was really hard. I didn’t have a lot of friends. I didn’t like myself. I made it through my classes, but it felt like a scramble. I felt I didn’t understand who I was supposed to be. In retrospect of course I felt lost. But since everyone around me was the same age, going through the same thing, all of us were at a loss for how to help each other. There were a lot of lows that year, but also some highs, like discovering Japanese Breakfast. JB would come to act as a literal sounding board for me.
2016’s Psychopomp, the first album released by the JB project, explored the grief of lead vocalist Michelle Zauner following her mother’s death. Upbeat “Everybody Wants To Love You” is the most popular track from the album, but the title track is the most revealing of the album’s theme. Just over a minute long, it includes a heartbreaking voicemail from Zauner’s mom. The 2017 album “Soft Sounds From Another Planet” (SSFAP) explores questions of human existence from a cosmic perspective. At 18, this album was everything I needed to hear. The opening notes of “Machinist” were built for crying. Scream-sing-along “Road Head” was my walking-to-class soundtrack. The warbling “Diving Woman” evokes spring-into-summer finals season, fueled by many dining room cookies. In the years following SSFAP, the band experienced modest indie success. However, it was 2021’s “Jubilee” that helped the band climb from underground to festival name. In contrast to previous projects, the album is quite literally about finding joy. Across their discography, JB has displayed consistent excellence in sifting through emotional experiences.
A year-long hiatus in Zauner’s family homeland of Seoul, South Korea, was deeply needed between ‘Jubilee’ and 2025’s “For Melancholy Burnette’s (& sad women).” She thought about staying, feeling a melancholy for a life she could have lived. Ultimately, she decided not to.
I’m not sure any JB album could hold a candle to SSFAP. It found me at such a soft and vulnerable moment in my life. But JB is excellent at finding my soft spots, and “Here is Someone” managed to crack something open in the same way, gently.
If you haven’t read Zauner’s “Crying in H Mart,” change that.
‘The Vilage’ – Sam Gendel, Nate Mercereau
(Photo by Sam Gendel and Alyssa Rowatt / Artwork by Zoe Curran)
About 30 minutes into “The Breakfast Show” hosted by Selassie TBC, came a break in the noise, figuratively. This song feels like the first morning light. The first sip of coffee. The return of spring. I’m not being cliche here, that’s actually how it feels. Also, a little bit like a video game soundtrack, but in a good way.
Sam Gendel and Nate Mercereau had not collaborated before “digi-squires,” an experimental ambient jazz album rooted in medieval aesthetics. Gendel is known as a jazz trickster and can be found making 34-song albums with a wind instrument out in the desert. Mercereau is known as a serial sampler and boasts an impressive resume of collaborations, including Surya Botofasina, Lizzo, Carlos Niño, Shawn Mendes, Idris Ackamoor, and André 3000. They’re both contemporary jazz musicians, flexible and varied. I don’t know a lot about contemporary jazz, or even classical jazz. But I find I don’t need to. It’s just easy to listen to, and that’s enough.
Sail away, sail away, sail away.
‘Don’t Be Seen With Me’ – Avalon Emerson
(Photo by Hunter Lombard / Artwork by Zoe Curran)
Avalon Emerson is building the Perpetual Emotion Machine. And she’s over dance music.
Ok, ok, only one of these things is true. But she is ready to branch out from dance tracks. “Don’t Be Seen With Me,” released in February on Dead Oceans Records, launched the start of her singles series. It’s one of her first singles released as part of the Perpetual Emotion Project (PME), a larger concept Emerson is seeking to explore. PME isn’t going to be an album, or a visual project, or even a show, but rather a way for Emerson to recontextualize her dance music favorites. Emerson is all about recontextualizing. In a single DJ set, you may hear Italo disco cozy up next to breakbeat, hip hop bleed into house, and then a curveball is thrown straight at your heart. If you had the privilege of catching her show at The Virginian this past winter, you know exactly what I’m talking about. She’s a master at creating deeply emotional dancefloor experiences, and now she’s interested in pulling her own heartstrings with PME edits.
I thought this track was an original, but it’s actually a cover of British duo Oppenheimers Analysis’ track by the same name. Released on cassette only, their 1982 album, “New Mexico,” has two claims to fame: a cult following and the dance floor heater, “The Devil’s Dancers.” If it has a third, it’s Emerson’s remix. The original and cover have very different energies. Oppenheimer’s version has that goofy ’80s sound. Very nostalgic and silly. This cover taps into something deeper and cathartic. It’s full of synth drama and a huge instrumental build. Before each chorus comes a drum break and Emerson’s voice, desperate, gasping, layered and discordant. The lyrics drip with contempt, contrasting with the evocative melody. That contempt is less clear in the original. In Emerson’s version, the melody highlights the vocals, instead of distracting from them. The emotion is clear and heavy from the first listen. “Don’t Be Seen With Me” succeeds in its larger goal: fueling perpetual emotions.
I am screaming this song when I sing it. It gets it all out, every nook and cranny cleansed.
Give the two a listen back-to-back and see for yourself.
