Alisa Xayalith on her debut album ‘Slow Crush’
NZ-born, LA-based singer-songwriter Alisa Xayalith’s triumphant debut album for her solo artist project serves up back-to-back indie-pop gems. Rising to fame as one of the founding members of The Naked And Famous, she will be touring the project across the US from April - June supporting Sunday (1994).
HM: Thanks so much for taking the time to chat to us! I'm very excited to talk about the new album. I think last time we hopped on a call you had just flown back from New York after playing on Jimmy Fallon.
Alisa: Oh yeah, with Foster the People.
HM: And you were moving house as well, so it seemed like a pretty chaotic time for you!
Alisa: Yeah (laughs). Like the last quarter of the year for me was just packed with a lot of big life stuff. And I'm really hoping to have a pretty boring year. I want to be able to get bored so I can focus on making music and focus on myself and just a little bit of daily life stability, work life balance (laughs).
HM: 100%, that sounds great! So how have you been since that time we last spoke?
Alisa: I’ve been great. I eloped, me and my partner. We eloped in November.
HM: Congratulations!
Alisa: Thank you. And then our family's met for the first time in New Zealand over the Christmas period, and then I was home in New Zealand for about a month, and we travelled around a bit in the South Island, and it was gorgeous. And then we got back kind of like mid January, and since I've been home the air has cleared up a little bit since the fires and I've just been working on album stuff. Just figuring out what I'm doing. I shot a visualizer on the weekend and edited it. So yeah, I've just been getting back to life here and trying to figure out what my year is going to look like.
And a big thing on the docket for me is figuring out a live show. So I've been making some phone calls, because I wouldn't know a thing about it in terms of putting it together and what I need. It’s another little learning curve for me, but I am really lucky to have some great friends who know how to help me with that.
HM: Cool, that sounds all very exciting! And congrats on your debut album “Slow Crush” - I absolutely love every single song on this. It just all works so well together and I also love a 10 track album. How did you land on the name of this album and what were some of the main things that were important for you to write about?
Alisa: Thank you. Yeah I called it “Slow Crush” mainly because there's a double meaning to it. I feel like at that crossroads where I arrived and trying to figure out what my project looked like. And as I've been looking back on everything, what's really amazing is the ability to kind of just start over. And I just feel exceptionally grateful that I was able to start over, even though I didn't know what it was going to look like, even though I knew it was going to be different. It had to be different. The thing that I have loved the most in my life, which is music and building my career, has been absolutely able to devastate me and crush me. I've been chasing a music career for the last 13 years of my life, and it did feel like it was slowly crushing me to the point where we hit the pandemic, and I was so depleted and drained, and it was kind of like all these slow things that built up over time where I just got to the end of 2019 and I just kind of like collapsed. And I said, “you know what? I don't know about music. I don't know what's gonna look like, but I need to take a break”. I completely fell out of love with being an artist, making music. It didn't give me any joy.
Then as I began to take care of myself, take care of my mental health, I slowly fell back in love with music, with my artistry, as well as the people around me were changing, and I was falling in love with my life partner even more, and it just kind of spilled into every crack into my life. And it's almost like it was a slow crush gradually building over time. From the last few years of just living life, trying to figure it out, came these 10 songs.
HM: Yeah, amazing! I love how you touched on the importance of self love. And I think a lot of people can relate to that feeling of just being burnt out, exhausted, not sure where to turn next - that kind of thing. What were some of the key steps for you to building yourself back up?
Alisa: I think first of all, recognizing what type of personality you are. And it's often people that are like people pleasers in their life that get the most burnt out. You really have to watch out for those people. I put myself into that category of taking care of people, being a caretaker, and that's kind of been my role for a long time. So I think recognizing that and putting myself first for the first time was the big first step. My partner, I remember him sitting me down at my dining room table, and he asked me “what do you want?”. I don't know if anybody's asked me that question with such intention in years. When was the last time somebody sat you down and said “Hey, I know life's crazy, and you're doing a million things for so many people, but I just want to give you the space and ask you, what do you want?”. That blew my mind. It gave me permission to just be ambitious, to say what I truly desired. And I'm like, I want to write music for me, and I want it to feel effortless, and I want it to fortify me like it did when I first started writing music when I was a teenager, and I haven't felt that for a long time, and I just want to get back there. That's what I want.
HM: Yes, love that! And you can definitely feel that in the new album. “What The Hell Do We Do Now?” - that’s one of my favourite tracks on the album. Can you tell us about the inspiration behind this song?
Alisa: I think I was just going through my writing sessions and writing love songs and having so much fun, naturally writing about heartache and love and limerence and anxiety and all that kind of stuff. But I had this kind of like weird moment where I was like, I don't think I've ever written about myself or where the character in the song was like the bad person. It comes back to the people pleasing, caretaking personality. You're always trying to do right by people. You're always trying to do the right thing. And so that kind of naturally happens in my songwriting. And I was like, “what if I wrote a song and I'm not the good guy or the character’s not the good guy?”. It just opened up this whole other world.
So taking little snippets of inspiration from my life, it's like “what the hell do we do now?”. People reach a stalemate sometimes, and they don't know what to do, but they have all the best intentions with trying to make it work. But what do you do when the ball is not in your court?
HM: Totally. It's such a great perspective to write from and such an interesting concept.
Alisa: I've been in that position so many times where I've been in the wrong and it's like “oh no, it's not up to me”. I don't have control of the situation.
HM: Yeah! Love it. And another one I wanted to talk about was “Alone With You”. This is such a stunning track and I always love the songs that are the 6/8 type feel as well. What was the process behind writing that one?
Alisa: Well, I was stuck in New Zealand a year ago. I didn't know if I was going to get my O1 visa. I was actually really at a low point, my health wasn't great. I was stuck in New Zealand for three months and historically, my visa gets approved in about two weeks. And I was like, “is this the one time in the 10 years I've been getting an O1 visa that it's not gonna happen?”. My entire life is in LA, what the hell am I gonna do? So I was just really anxious and depressed, and I was sleeping on a couch at my friend's house, just waiting. And I was like “right, well I guess I can just set up some writing sessions”. And I set one up with Josh Naley (Wells*), and it was just him and I, and I'm really emotionally depleted. I don't know what I'm gonna do right now, but I'm so sad. I miss home, I miss my partner, I miss my dog, and long distance is really difficult sometimes when it's international time zones and we keep missing each other.
And I remember it was around the time during the Super Bowl, I called him. He was at a party, and he’s like “I'm really sorry I have to go”. I'm like, “No, can you just stay on the phone for a little longer?” which is where that line comes from about the party in the pre chorus. That was just a captured moment in time with Josh Naley, and he and I wrote it, and Harry Charles and then Tyler Spry.
HM: What a great team!
Alisa: Yeah, they ended up just helping me take it to the finish line, and we got some strings players on it.
It's such a beautiful song. I love that song so much. And the original, first demo vocal, I couldn't recreate it. So we ended up keeping the original demo vocals from recording it on an SM7, because in the verses, you hear my voice crack, and that's genuinely me being so tired from crying and trying to sing. So I tried to just re-record it on the same microphone I did on all of my songs. And Tyler was like “No, we're gonna have to use the original demo for that”. And we ended up just comping in takes from that.
HM: Wow, yeah I think there's something just so raw and emotional about a demo. There's something about it, like a magical essence to it but you just can't recreate it as you mentioned.
Alisa: Exactly. And I think when you've been sitting with songs for a long time, you try to recreate the better version of it. And I did go through a process where I was just listening to all my songs. I'm like, “okay, I'm gonna re-record that, I'm gonna re-record that” and I just went a bit mad with it where all I was doing was tracking vocals and editing them and driving myself wild (laughs).
HM: And did you have any main highlights or core memories when making this project?
Alisa: I have so many. I think the making of this record was kind of sprinkled over the last couple of years, and “When You Were Mine” happened when I was fostering this dog called Riley. She's a terrier mix. She had a really sad story. She was found on the side of the road. She had just given birth to puppies. Somebody stole her puppies. But I was fostering a lot of dogs during the pandemic, and she ended up coming to stay with me. She was my fifth dog. And with every single dog we foster, we have the same conversation. Should we adopt? Do you think that they would fit into the family? And she was like my girl, and that was the one dog that just broke my heart. She was in the writing session during “When You Were Mine” and that song was inspired by her.
That song came from the lyric Sierra Deaton had. I feel like there's gonna be a ghost town of memories that I will look back on and carry of all these beautiful dogs, and they'll go on to live their lives, and they'll get adopted, and I'll never see them again but I'll have the memory of being able to care for them and send them out into the world prepared. So that's a really, really special memory for me, that song specifically.
HM: I love that. And I know you love working with lots of collaborators and different artists and other projects. You mentioned working with Josh Naley and Harry Charles - have you been working on any other artist projects that you can talk about?
Alisa: Oh my God, yes! I'm so excited for some releases this year that I've worked on. I have a release coming out with Gracie (Moller) in New Zealand. She's such a little, beautiful, vulnerable artist and we wrote a song that’s coming out that's really tapping into dark, feminine power. It's really cool. And then I also worked with this really awesome band called Blusher. They're from Australia - they are the coolest girlies. I had the pleasure of working with them over a couple of days and writing a few songs. And two of the songs I wrote with them are going on their EP. I don't know when it's coming out, but they've started teasing it, and it just gives me so much joy, because just working with girls in a room, you're just joking around, you're having a good time, drinking so many cups of tea, maybe there'll be some kind of like banana bread (laughs). Somebody brought some brownies or some cookies. And I just love stepping into their world. It's so fun and light. So I'm very excited about their EP coming out, like from the top down, it’s just such a good EP. I did write something with Vera Blue. I think it's coming out this year, but I'm not sure so I can't say too much about that. I think those are the ones from the top of my head that are the most recent that are coming out.
HM: Exciting! It's awesome that you've been across all of that stuff, as well as your own music.
Alisa: Oh, I know. It's kind of wild, but I'm really grateful to my team. They kind of keep me organised (laughs). I told them that for Q1 of 2025 that I won't be doing any writing sessions, that I need to just focus on getting my live show ready, so I've just been in my little bedroom studio here, practicing my songs and just trying to play and sing. I haven't been on stage since 2019 - like I don't know who she is. I haven't like been her, the performer, for a long time (laughs). So there's quite a few things that I would like to do in order to prepare myself, and I'm really scared.
Do you ever listen to Mel Robbins? She was talking about confidence. So this is kind of where I'm at right now in this point in time. She said confidence isn't something you just have. Confidence is from doing something consistently, and then from doing something consistently, you are more prepared. And because you're more prepared, you are more confident and you're more capable of the one thing that you are wanting to be more confident in. So say I wanted to be better at public speaking, which I do. I'm like “okay, well maybe if I talk to the camera more and then post on the internet, and the more I do that, the better I'll become at public speaking and speaking out loud”. And so, because I've been finishing a record in the studio with multiple people, so I'm not necessarily playing instruments every day, but I'm writing and I'm singing and I'm recording and I'm editing and I'm meeting people and writing songs with other people, I haven't necessarily had that watershed moment where I'm just walking into a room, I'm sitting down, I'm learning the songs. So I'm kind of switching modes for the first quarter of this year to just really dive into that part of the process that it takes to prepare to be a performer again.
HM: Yeah! Do you feel like you kind of step into an alter ego persona when you're on stage? Or do you still feel like it's very genuinely you?
Alisa: I do think it's me on stage in a room performing in front of people, but in terms of a persona, I haven't thought of that. I’ve just been leading myself with my intuition and my gut, and that's all I have to go on right now. But maybe that can kind of like evolve. I think live performance is just another facet of being an artist, and it can really help inform what you do next.
HM: Yeah, I guess it's so influenced by the music that you're creating. And are you looking to play shows in New Zealand and in the US?
Alisa: Yeah, I definitely am. But as you know, being an indie artist, it’s so limited and you have to be really intentional about how you do it. And I think because of limited funds, I just have to be really intentional with where I invest that money and what kinds of shows I'm playing. So I think being in LA if I can get my show together and I can jump on some local things, that makes a lot of sense. But I would love to play in Australia and New Zealand and do a run there. It would be so fun. I would just love to come home and and write and do some more stuff there too. It was so nice to come home last year in December, popped into the studio, and just hung out. Also it's nice, because when I come home and I see my sister who's about 12 years older than me, it's so nice to be mothered (laughs). I don't have a lot of friends who have that kind of mothering spirit, I guess I am that person for a lot of my friends, and it's just so nice to come home and be mothered by my family.
HM: Yes! And my last question for you is, do you have any pieces of advice for other artists out there, or what's some of the lessons that you've learned that you can share with any other artists?
Alisa: Remember what your tools are. You say “you can't record, you can't do this, you can't do that, I want to be bigger”. Actually, you probably have everything you need. You don't need all the fancy things to make a song. If you want to promote your music, you have a phone, it's free. Use the apps, but do it wisely and strategically. I just feel like for me, for the longest time actually, I thought I needed all of these things to kind of set the stage to write a song. Like maybe I need a new guitar or maybe I need a new microphone. But then you hear about artists like Steve Lacy who writes a song on his iPad, or there's an artist that Tyler is actually working with a lot, and he uses this app on his phone called BandLab. He drops tracks into this app and he uses the little earpods with a microphone with the wire, and he uses that microphone to record a lot of his vocals. And he's like one of the biggest indie artists right now.
But I think the most valuable thing from watching so many different types of artists at work, they just are really good at using the tools in front of them. If you're a singer and you want to learn how to write songs and record, well then get your GarageBand going on your laptop. Your tools are so important. Just get to know your tools really well. And I think that is the biggest piece of advice that I have, because sometimes, when you want to be an artist, you don't necessarily have the community. You don't necessarily have friends that do the same thing as you do to kind of like confide in so all you have is yourself and the tools that are available to you.
Thanks heaps Alisa! Make sure to keep up with her on Instagram, TikTok, Spotify & Apple Music.
