zzzahara

“I decided to just let myself go,” Zzzahara says of their new record, Spiral Your Way Out. “I think I finally came to this acceptance that I don't have to be perfect. I want to be a good role model to my fans and stuff like that, but I also don't want to hide who I am.”

Zzzahara’s music wades into the deep waters of love, lust, and self-discovery in a part of the world where artifice and authenticity co-exist. Emerging from the heart of LA’s alternative music scene, their sound is raw in feeling and rebellious by nature. Their 2022 debut album, Liminal Spaces, chronicles a coming-of-age in Highland Park, following painful childhood memories through to late-night, live-fast coping mechanisms, and the changes the neighbourhood has endured over the same period of time. Their 2023 follow-up, Tender, marked a period of slowing down, looking inward, and embracing a softer side of being.

To be released through Lex Records in early 2025, Spiral Your Way Out sees Zzzahara evolve again. Emotionally, its foundations are built on scorched earth. The album finds Zzzahara in the aftermath of a relationship spent trying to fit someone else’s mould, being jerked around by indecision, and then hitting “emotional rock bottom.” Made in a three month burst that let all their pent-up frustrations loose, Spiral Your Way Out is in part a work of self-reclamation, swapping Tender’s meditative state for something fiery and more assertive. “I was going through such a tough time, but I felt like I didn't have anyone to reach out to,” Zzzahara says of the period leading up to the album, which was a chaotic blur spent mostly on tour or in isolation. “When I finally sat down in the studio I just had all this fucking anger – towards that person for treating me badly, but mostly towards myself for not walking away. I think in that situation I just kind of let things be, and I was mad at myself for letting myself isolate for so long and never putting my foot down. In the end, I just took it all out on the record.”

Spiral Your Way Out marks another sonic evolution as much as an emotional one. Zzzahara’s songs have always come wrapped in a warm glow that reflects how they were written – namely at home in their bedroom. That glow remains on Spiral Your Way Out, but it also packs an ambitious streak and a gutsy punch. Taking a more collaborative approach than usual, Zzzahara worked with a range of producers including Jorge Elbrecht (Japanese Breakfast, No Joy, Sky Ferreira), Sarah Tudzin (boygenius / Cloud Nothings / The Armed), former Ducktails guitarist Alex Craig (Jelani Aryeh / re6ce) and Halsey tour drummer Nate Lotz, who helped harness their intimate style of writing and blow it up into something more panoptic. “A lot of the instrumentation is either a group effort or just two of us in the room, so it felt nice to have that weight off my shoulders,” they explain. “It felt comfortable to have them lead or translate what I’d written and make it better.”

Tracks like “If I Had To Go I Would Leave the Door Closed Half Way” and “Pressure Makes a Diamond” refine familiar territory, all sun-drenched guitars and aching vocals. But Zzzahara’s usual open-hearted confessionalism comes with newfound jagged edges. “I was so mad I couldn’t think / All I did was lay in bed and scream,” they lament on opener “It Didn’t Mean Nothing,” whose cocktail of jangly riffs, walking bass lines and emotional sting recalls The Smiths. Single “Head On A Wheel” is a lash-out garage rock jam “for everyone feeling discontent, apathetic, or just dead inside,” while “In Your Head” looks for comfort in the opposite direction, laying its head down in slow burn melodies and fuzzy shoegaze guitars. 

With a broad church of influences, zzzahara’s vocal style and knack for earworm melodies act as a throughline without tying the album to a specific genre. One distinct thread through Spiral Your Way Out is Zzzahara's unabashed embrace of their formative emo and punk influences for the first time, revisiting artists like Bright Eyes and Broken Social Scene while going through a newly minted Elliott Smith era. The reeling riffs and heartsick lyrics of “In Your Head” evoke early Title Fight, while stripped-back moments like “Ghosts” and “Wish That You Would Notice” take a page out of the Scene Aesthetic and Dashboard Confessional playbooks. The vocals take the lead, allowing the most painful emotions to stick out like exposed nails.

Of all the tracks on the album, zzzahara says “Wish That You Would Notice” was the biggest weight off their shoulders. It poured out fast and straight from the heart in just five minutes. “The perspective that I wrote it from was just like letting somebody drive the car. I wrote it about my ex, and it felt like she was always driving the car and instead of being vocal or communicative. I felt like had tried so much by that point that I just let the car drive. That song was me just spitting bars about how I felt.”

There is a certain ease to zzahara’s music that's rooted in the ebb and flow of their life. They pick up the guitar and write every day, clinging to the most memorable riffs and melodies like lights in the dark. “Music for me is therapeutic. I'll listen to something and be like, ‘this is my mood for the day,’ and that’s what I want my songs to feel like. Could this be a vibe for the day? Could I listen to this at night and cry? Could it evoke a feeling?” they explain. “It could be sadness, happiness, angst… If the chords feel good and the BMP makes you want to move, then that’s the thing I want to make,” they explain. “I want to evoke a feeling, and if I can do that then I want other people to have it.”

Zzzahara’s approach to song writing is an instinctive one, and the headspace of Spiral Your Way Out was the result of taking a more instinctive approach to life too. One of the biggest influences on the album was embracing a side of themselves they moved away from on Tender – going out, “spiralling,” meeting all sorts of weirdos and collecting the kinds of experiences that make for good stories if nothing else. The lyrics are playful and cutting, inspired by the books Zzzahara was devouring at the time – a lot of lowlife literature like Post Office by Charles Bukowski (reverb-washed ballad “Bluebird” is named after one of his poems) and Choke by Chuck Palahniuk, as well as the observational “realness” of California girls Joan Didion and Eve Babitz. The recklessness on full display within the works of all these writers is something Zzzahara finds “comforting, in a way.”

“My favourite thing about Bukowski is that he just doesn’t care,” they laugh. “He lets it all rip. He’s this dysfunctional alcoholic misogynistic dude, and my shit kind of lines up with his in these a way: how he’s raised, the alcoholism, the countless women... I feel like a lot of encounters in my life have been like that. Ever since I was 12, I was always with different girls, doing drugs and drinking. As I’ve gotten older I’ve started to get [more] tender, but I'm not opposed to that lifestyle either.”

After a year of upheaval, Zzzahara finally feels “calm.” The musical equivalent to going several rounds on a punching bag, Spiral Your Way Out finds solace between extremes. It licks its wounds in a place where pain and love, healing and abandon, sit side-by-side. If it has a message, it's one of standing tall in your own shoes – scuffs and all. 

“My whole life, all I've known is destruction. Having a dysfunctional family, trying to figure out where I lie in this world… I feel like that’s the kind of life I lead. Very spirally, very chaotic. It’s one big fucking mystery,” they smile. “It takes so long for me to feel comfortable in any place, but working on not giving a fuck has been my vibe recently. Like, I could spiral out of control, but that’s just who I am. That's what I figured out at the end of this journey: I don’t need all this therapy. I don’t need to be sober. I can just be, and it'll be okay.”