we've never done this yeah we haven't yeah I'm happy to be here thank you for having [Music] me what a happy start to the year for you and Dawn congratulations thank you so much I mean I don't want to go too much into it it's personal and I know
more than anything being a father that when you start a family it really becomes about um creating a safe space to do that and to and to grow um but you know we're 30 45 minutes into into you sort of sharing this news with your fans
on Instagram and so can I ask how you feel now that you know everyone knows and it feels very celebratory I'm really happy it feels really freeing cuz I don't have to be you know we we go out all the time to eat or to run errands or to whatever and I would just be wearing
a coat cuz I didn't want anyone to sneak a picture make an announcement for us um so yeah it's a good feeling to just be like out with it now you know yeah for sure and I think it's amazing that um you know you and Don found each other
such incredible unique artists in your own right but that you get to build something that can exist in the creative space if you wanted to but you've got something so much kind of bigger in a way like family is like it's the greatest Journey you'll ever go on you
know yeah absolutely our our relationship is a lot deeper than you know all of this other stuff so we definitely like to balance keeping our private life private you know yeah yeah how's it made you feel about um you know where where you were as a kid growing up
in those key moments that you discovered art and what sort of music did for you when you were a kid and and you were figuring out your identity um how did music show up for you what was when did you need it most I think for me music always was
um therapeutic empowering healing uh a lot of times I was the kid cuz my S I have a lot of siblings but they're all a lot older than me so I was the baby of the house so nobody wanted to play with me cuz they were all so much older than me you know so they
would always be playing and I was always the one that I was like kind of on my own music was definitely for me that escape I guess you know where did you escape to what was the music that really sort of captured you and made you realize that that this was yours and
that this music spoke to you and gave you that safe space so much different music I kind of became just obsessed with finding obscure bands and music from other countries and music in all types of different languages um you know Europe Africa India wherever and all
types of different and that's when I really started digging into all these and and all of that cuz there's such a Timeless feel to your music you make these really amazing modern pop records but there is something about the way you
perform you write them and and on stage certainly that it feels timeless it doesn't feel like you're trying to tap into anything too modern met meta modern it's just very like do you know what I mean there's an there is an oldie feel to the way that you present your music
yeah I think just um for me like vocal layering vocal stacking harmonies um all of that plays a big part in the essence of my writing and um in my process as a singer songwriter so I think no matter what genre I experiment with that's what kind of
makes it all still tie in and still have my Essence no matter what for sure I mean this is why you built such a a broaden and really interesting body of work over the course of your career today and here we are with your you know with a brand new album um which is start
to finish just very tasteful and the flow is I know you put a lot into making sure that the tracklisting and everything felt very seamless yeah no absolutely I always I care a lot about my track listing but it's definitely the
last thing that I do I try to just create freely and not worry too much about like thematically or sonically how things are going to fit together until the end the album's called orcadas um obviously that has an important uh resonance through the music um it's a
beautiful image it's a beautiful flower I'm a fan as well I love to have them in my house without fail without fail um so where did you land on that and and and how did that sort of help you create the mood you were trying to achieve with
this record you know I think it was perfect because for me it had it has that sense of timelessness like we were talking about um it's also the national flly of Colombia and this being my second Latin album I feel like it's always been important for me when I make
a body of work in Spanish to um pay tribute to a lot of the genres I listen to Growing Up and and my Heritage so that played a part and then I didn't I didn't actually know at the time but later I found out it's actually the flower of fertility
and so then after I found out I was pregnant I was like oh this is really so perfect because you know I have been pregnant most of the roll out so it's been it's been a very different experience for me what did you learn speaking of different experiences how
did you push yourself and what did you emerge from making this record that that changed you as an artist I think I I think I pushed myself in in ways um energetically because I'm not really I don't have that much dance music and so
this is this is my dance album um so I think I learned a lot more about just pushing myself to make all types of different genres you know like there's M there's um more pero there's house there's Latin disco so I guess just playing more with I learned a lot more
about my versatility I would say but even on song number one see when when it starts I love that song and when it starts I'm like oh great we're going to get into this place that I know and love really well with Cali where I'm going to find myself in in
this kind of really meditative Zone and then to your point Tempo kicks in all of a sudden yeah kind of a shark but it's beautiful and and I think that that flows through the record there is a lot of dance floor groov and Tempo and dynamic on the album but I don't feel
like you rushed yourself to keep up I feel like you made the tempo work in your flow does that does that make sense yeah yeah it's still very it's still very me I know it it's weird because I feel like my core fan base any artist
core fan base they're always going to expect a certain thing from you or want a certain thing from you but I think as an artist is really important for me at least to never be predictable and I really actually don't like um when I when I love artist and I love
their body of works and then it's like every time they drop something it's kind of like I already know what it's going to sound like every song kind of they're thinking for us as fans almost rather than thinking for themselves yeah yeah
yeah yeah so so I love to just have fun with it and keep um keep everybody on their toes you know what could it be but let's talk about your fan base for a second because um you know everybody obviously when you build a group of fans around you that help to support your
career through those changes through the the hits and the and the experiments um you you respect it but I feel like you have one of those fan bases that has really flown the flag throughout the whole entire time like very passionate
I've been in the crowds I've seen it I'm one of them um you know do you feel that they they have expectations of you because I certainly don't and I feel like actually that they want you to thrive and to grow yeah I think a lot of them are very emotionally intelligent
people because a lot of the music is emotionally intelligent so it naturally draws people that you know can see beyond the surface level um you know the numbers and the like pop star type expectations that people put on artists um but I think the young ones are
probably you know like the St type of ones stand Twitter type people will be the ones that they care more about you know like oh why aren't you promoting this more why aren't you doing this more why aren't you doing that more that's just access right people just want
access they want they want to know what you think and they want to know what's going on yeah or I feel like they just want me to they want me to promote my music more and like work harder for my career like you know they want things for you and
that's great and that's beautiful but at the same time um for me that's not I didn't start making music to have like a oversaturated career and I'm happy with where I'm at so so you you've felt confident all the way through even during those moments when certain fans
or people have felt like that song should have been bigger or this should have happened cuz you're right we're all in a race right everyone's in such a hurry all the time you've been able to meditate through that experience you knew that this was moving at the pace
you were comfortable with yeah I just I just look at um a lot of Industries and just anything that you know contributes to capitalism it just ends up being like a rat race very much and so for me I always try to remind myself when people try to make me
feel competitive or try to make me feel like oh well you got to be you know you got to be this you got to be that I'm like that's that's cool and everything but at the end of the day I I am who I am and I'm going to do what I came to do
and I feel confident about that and um constantly reminding myself like why I started doing this in the first place it was never for that so so what is success to you what's the metric of value ooh for me I think success like luxury I learned is really just being
able to do whatever you want every day having peace because freedom of counsel right having peace cuz nothing in the world is worth stress and the effects that it has on our bodies um and yeah happiness happiness over everything I feel like you know you're work ethic is
is something that people now starting to really understand I mean youve continue to collaborate with people I mean you're constantly working touring you know you're selling out Arenas now you're really hyper I mean you've put the work
in this doesn't happen for nothing yeah I did and I did work a lot I'm still doing a lot of work but I think that's why I'm kind of in a place in my life where I'm like you know um I grew up in a Latino household and you know my my family was a immigrant family so you
very much always have the mentality you know that capitalistic mentality and of of constantly having to be productive and constantly needing to make money and I think trying to free myself a bit more from that is kind of where I'm at right
now so I'm still I create every day um I have a whole another album I'm ready to drop this year give me 20 minutes I'll get i'll get to that I can't get to that just yet I'm still I'm still a level this album so that's that's just a part
of who I am and what I do every day and my lifestyle and my life I don't really look at it as a job it's more like it's just who I am and it's what I do but um in regards to like you know going on press tours and going on tours in general I don't I don't tour very often
and um I don't I don't pop out very often so when you do shows though I mean I was at fogor yeah you stole that you stole that show a thank you so much that was amazing your fun that day you know the tour was a little bit stressful the
second half of the tour I was pregnant so it was a little bit stressful because I was trying to hide my pregnancy um and so I think that kind of took a little bit of the fun out of the performance because you know just trying to be like oh I don't want to be too
close and then someone get a video and my bump is showing it was so tasteful it was so tasteful cuz it was so much silhouette what I saw and the way that you were at the back you know you never felt like you were tucking yourself back
it was all so AR the op Direction was incredible oh thank you so much when I think about when I listen to this album it sounds very free it sounds like you feel very happy making this record that you knew that you were on a wave that you know the the first album that you'd
made the first Latin album that you'd made in a way kind of freed you up to to approach this one with a sense of like only your expectations only your sense of what you can achieve is that fair to say it feels very different to me yeah
it it's definitely different than any other body of work that I ever made I think I had a lot more fun with it um and I had a lot of it was a lot of work just because I I kind of have gone back to my roots in the sense of when I started making music it was just me by
myself in my room when I came to LA and when I went to work on isolation I felt like I had so much to prove so I went everywhere to work on that album I went in the room with everybody you know I I flew to Ohio to get the feature from
Bootsy I flew to you know wherever to work with um Kevin from T andala to work with Damon alurn from gorillas I flew everywhere and did everything I could that's why the album took 3 years to make um and then now I'm just kind of back in that place where I'm like so
anyway I'm here in my house in my room by myself and whoever wants to send me whatever I'm happy with that but um I kind of already know who I like to work with and a lot of times I just write songs in the shower um things will just pop up into
my head when I'm in the shower and I will just record them and then I will send them to The Producers like oh I have this idea that and we work over emails and so it's complicated to work that way you prefer it though but I do prefer it because I think I just am
exerting a lot less energy into like the moving around and the shuffling around and trying to focus that energy more into um just playing a full part in all the executive production so are you a home body do you think absolutely yeah
yeah yeah very much it's an interesting business to be in and you're not alone I've met many artists who find their peace away but they're drawn into the outside in a very forward-facing way were there times before you could con sort of control I don't like the word control
but manage the way you show up works for you better where it was hard it was it was tough being a home body and having to go out there and hustle and be in front of so many people all the time yeah it was it was hard cuz when I came
to a know I like I really wanted to just um be as open as I could about getting in as many sessions in as many rooms as I could which is tough those sessions are tough man I mean when you're walking into a room and it's like hey nice to meet you let's write a song about my
inner thoughts I it was really unproductive for me yeah and I mean I write all my own music but even just meeting so many different people and then it's like you might not even get anything out of the session because you actually didn't connect musically or
whatever it's like I feel like a lot of times was wasted but I had to have that experience when I came here you know to to try it out and do it and now I feel like I have my core group of people that I know that they know how to work with
me and they I know who you know if I'm like oh I want something that sounds like this I'm going to send this to son so today I'm going to send this to this person and then who showed up on the rord I mean who who's in the who's in the scene well the first song I did it
with Carter I really like working with Carter he's a really cool person and then um I brought Soundwave in just to like give it an extra oomph so Soundwave came in and he added some drums and he added some some sounds and what did you
hear that you knew Soundwave was going to bring what's unique because this happens a lot I hear apart from sound wave being incredible and making his own music and with people from scratch but I know that he is the person that gets bored in at times to go hey it's missing
you what is it missing you know for me cuz when I first started the song I had played Carter some stuff and I feel like he understood what wanted to do with the song but something something about the drums it was something about the drums that I
was just like I just feel like wave could could really take it there and um I played him the whole album and I had him jump in on a few songs just to just to get them you know just to tighten them up with me yeah uh so yeah they they did the first one together it
sounds so good as well like when those drums come in and it's so crazy I mean it's it's it's it's almost Dreamscape it's a lot of this record even when you're like being very direct with your with melodically and rhythmically feels like it's coming from quite
a a sort of half awake space for me I think that's I think that's the thing that that definitely ties it into the general essence of my music is that even though it is so different from other stuff that I have it is dreamy still which is a word that gets thrown around
a lot when it comes to my my songs so I think that's definitely the thing that's it in still and makes it still me you know have you ever written a song in a dream o uh I actually did wake up a couple times from a from um you know
there was a song and a dream and I woke up and I tried to remember it and I think I remembered it like one time but it's rare one of the great things about this record is that you know the collaborations you've chosen it feels
very much in keeping with with some of the most exciting voices that are out there doing their own thing you know peso Carol and it it feels to me like you know this this album is so in perfect time in terms of what's happening with Latin music why did you
work with peso what do you love about him well for me I just love Mexico in general um uh my uncle is Mexican and he was like kind of like a part-time dad to me so um I've always felt really close to Mexican culture and Mexican people and I wanted to incorporate
somebody from Mexico who was like putting on you know on a global scale for them right now and to me that's him right now for sure and the song which is um I there there's kind of a central character that moves through this um through the song
and and I wonder how much you know cuz I know you write very personally but also how much you kind of rely on character study sometimes in order to develop these songs into something I never really think of it as a character study
but I think that yeah thematically when I did look back at all the music I seen that it was you know it's it's very girly it's very much a celebration of Womanhood is very you know um princess you know the girl like that you know gets what she wants and and um I think
it's I think it's has a lot of important messages for for young women and you know no matter how old you are I think it's important to understand your worth and and add text so that's pretty much the whole album what page of this particular album is that song attached
to what is the S what is the story in this particular song this song well I really wanted to focus on you know I'm talking about this this girl this woman and and how she doesn't necessarily care about the other things that people might want her to care about
in in today's society so it's kind of a you know in a way challenging the societal norms for girls today in the sense of you know she doesn't care about money she doesn't care about materialistic things she doesn't care about Fame she doesn't care about
whatever she cares about her soul she cares about her heart and I think it's a beautiful message to send because um we need more people like that in the world and uh yeah so I think he was great for it because like I said I love to make
music that's unpredictable and a lot of people were scared how he would sound on this and didn't know how he would sound on it and he really killed it so K yeah kuchi we have it's great to to see you at this point after what's been one of
the most interesting and I think kind of exciting Journeys since I've been in America watching you sort of grow as an artist and it made me think about the beginning because I know that it's been with its twists and turns you know you signed your record deal out of the UK I
wonder looking back on that now whether that feels unorthodox and hindsight the idea of you kind of signing in a territory where you're not actually based and you know what the challenges were to that and how and how you may have done that differently or or how it
works absolutely yeah I think like how I told you I started music very naively I didn't even really think about the fact like I'm going to be a part of this thing called the music industry now I didn't know anything about the music
industry I didn't know anybody in the music industry um I just knew that I love to create I live to make music I love to be creative and that's what I wanted to dedicate my life to when people first started reaching out to me to do um to sign and whatever I I was
Solly looking at at labels as a bank I was just you know like I need money to make this album I have no money I need money to live somewhere to me it was more so a move out of a desperation and not having access or privilege to being
able to you know have the resources that it took to make isolation or to you know live so help me get create some infrastructure so that I can do what I've been doing yeah like I just need I just exactly like I just need some funding so cuz that was my first album
and I mean I had saved up some money from from working to move out to LA but it wasn't it wasn't that much money to you know I didn't know how long I was going to be able ble to string myself along living in Los Angeles so yeah I
feel that I feel that if I could do it over again I definitely wouldn't have signed so early and I mean like a lot of other artists you know I got a really bad deal so um I wouldn't I wouldn't have done it no definitely not were there times when that stress potentially
kind of infiltrated your creative process or your confidence um there's times where it can feel really restricting um and kind of um I think it's definitely frustrating I think it's really frustrating because especially when you're really young and you don't know
anything and then you just have people around you that just want to get paid off of you and they're like oh this is the best thing ever and they're just like telling you that the contract is something is not and you know you know
the system is created to make us have to rely on other people to read the contracts for us and other people to to um um get their percentages and everything so I think there's a lot of ulterior motives a lot of times when people try to get Young Artists to sign
really soon and so what's your advice to young artists who are fans yours right now listening right now I mean you've got the benefit of wisdom now and you've come through the other side you're a bonafied success and you're able to manage your career as you want so what's
your advice now my advice to them would be to definitely wait as long as they can um before signing with anybody and to just try to develop a team a group of people around them that really has their best interest at heart because there is
a lot of people that take advantage I love how honest you are on your writing thank you the good times the tough times you know you put it all on the table what subject or or what when when is it hardest for you to let go of what you're
feeling into the music are there times when it's it's challenging trying to put it into words no honestly um making music and being creative is the easiest part of my life like that's um I I have a I speak to a therapist now and she talks to a lot of other
artists and she told me the other day she was like you're the only artist that I talk to that when we talk we literally just talk about personal life family like real real issues and every the she's like all the other artists that I talk to they're like you know they're
going through like um they're going through like trying to figure out what to do next and what where to you know for me that's like the easiest most simplest part of my life so I don't I don't have that type of struggle how do you how do you find out from your
therapist that you go to you go to band camp therapy that's what I want to know I don't want to know from my therapist who the my therapist is talking to like you know yeah I know I know a couple other her clients but I know you know
who they are yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah I do know who a couple of them are but that's because um when someone had recommended me her they were recommending her in the sense that they were like there is things that we go through and being in the spotlight and
being you know the those types of things do affect people's mental health so that was the main reason why I was like Oh okay that's cool that she's work with other people that have my my job because she can have she has a little bit of
insight into dealing with you know I I wonder sort of like if you have any sort of insight personally as to what Drew you into the Arts given that there were things internally that you uh probably had to figure out and now figuring out as a as an adult art was the most
easiest decision I ever had to make in my life life um I never questioned once what I was going to do in my life from what age probably like 15 16 yeah yeah I was like yeah I'm not going to um purs I'm not going to try to have like a backup
plan I'm just going to go straight for this and if it doesn't work out it doesn't work out but this is what I'm going to do in my life no matter what that's got to be the kind of the secret in a way doesn't it because I think at the end of the day it's like someone
said to me they're in a successful band and they said that when they signed their deal their lawyers said if you guys can focus on this for 10 years and not think about anything else just this you might have a shot right and it is it's about complete dedication
and focus isn't it yeah I think also I think everybody has their own intentions behind why they choose to dedicate their lives to what they dedicate their lives to and for me I'm I was just very centered on the fact that this is who I am and these are going to be the
contributions I make to the world and whether or not I became successful was kind of it was of course it's like of course you want to um get something out of the work that you do but it was really just more so I will not be happy with my life if
I'm not doing this you know I mean in in many respects I can imagine that you must feel more secure and comfortable in your decision making process and the and the speed at which you choose to move because you're where a majority of your peers are
in your own way you're in the Arenas yeah you're playing high up at the festival bills you're doing great streaming numbers you Haven hit records I mean and you did it without having to compete I never felt like you were competing with anyone I think that when
you car when you very much carve out your own your own lane and and you have your own world and um I've never I don't really keep up that much with what other people are doing um and I think just because I'm always so focused on on what's going on in my
own life and my own personal stuff and and and then finding time outside of that to still stay creative and all of that I just don't have time to be worried about what other people got going on so so what's inspires the the the idea of a collaboration is it is it
a personal relationship I mean yeah like all of that yeah like G was definitely like you know she's the biggest artist in Colombia like that's you know that's uh really important to me she's a beautiful person she's a great person and
um JT same you know that's my friend and I love her and I love everything that she's doing I think her choosing to chase her uh solo career is like something that I really um admire and how hard she works I really admire and then have you given her words of
encouragement as such uh we definitely talk a lot we definitely talked a lot about just you know all of the all the difficulties that you face as a woman and and and you know she she goes through real stuff too so you know just trying to balance all of that while also
trying to keep pushing in in your career is is always going to be a challenge so like now more than ever I try to focus on Center myself in in why I started I want to contribute music music is my contribution all the other stuff I think
sometimes you can get very lost in like trying to prove who you are trying to prove the things you stand for for trying to prove that you're a good person and and like all these other things that at the end of the day I I Know Myself and I know who I am and so I
feel I'm you know I'm in I'm in a very different place in regards to I guess how much I I share as well um of of things outside of music so I'm just focusing on sharing music I appreciate that I appreciate the fact you're taking the time to talk to me I mean I know you
don't do this very often um the album is is just as I said such a tasteful brilliant exercise in storytelling and honesty and Tempo um and I wondered what your favorite song on it is right now uh I do I really love kamasi I really love ELO
um what's my other favorite song I think right now those are probably my top two and where are you going next where's this album that you're working on right now what can you tell us giv too much gosh it's so different from from from both of these
projects and I think um I will say it's going back to a lot of I want to say like Soul music and I think a more elevated version of kind of where I started so I think that my core like my fan base is is really going to love it and I I feel
really happy about it and I really love it so I will say a lot of like old these inspired all these soul type but in a different way can you describe the moment when you realized that that was the direction in life's path that you wanted to take creatively
were where it hit you where you were like oh this is what I want to say next I don't know know it just it just happened I mean that that one I've been working on it the whole time that I've been that I've been pregnant so I think I I got into a very you know pregnancy
it changes you so much and then a lot of other things happen in my life that that were really it was like everything a lot of things happened all at once last year that were like really big you know like points like grieving and and uh and
becoming becoming pregnant and grieving and and just all these things that I was just like why is this all happening at once and it made me take a step back and and and I guess want to make music that's that's more like at the core of it I would say it's my most
existential body of work it's a lot more vulnerable than anything that I've ever done and I I slow it down yeah is that when therapy really started to to help no you know what I've been doing therapy for a couple of years now and I think
that at this point you know I started it because I wanted to heal like childhood stuff and um and then even more after I found out I was becoming a mother you know I really wanted to heal a lot of those wounds you know then now I kind of feel like I'm I feel I do feel healed
and I but I feel like more so uh my therapist is more so that I don't have to put when things happen I don't have to put it on my friends and the people close to me like venting is more like I vent to her right there and so I'm able
to vent to her so that I don't have to put that on the people around me cuz I don't sometimes it's really dark and it's really heavy and um so I would just I would just text her like hey I really need to talk right now about you know XYZ and so that's that's more so the
purpose that is serving right now but yeah well congratulations again I it's it's not lost on me or anybody that you know you've just you've just announced that uh you're going to become a mom for the first time and I just send heartfelt
congratulations to you and Don thank you so much we appreciate it and thank you so much for this record and I hope we get to talk again soon like I said I know that you don't do this very often man but I I I really appreciate you as an artist thank you for having [Music] me