How do you find a sense of home in a new city? To leave an old life behind and begin a new one is an anxiety-inducing and transformative process that Phoenix-born and NYC-based singer koleżanka has mastered.

Today she shares her new video for In A Meeting off of her upcoming LP Place Is, which is set to be released via Bar/None on July 30th. The track deals with the all too familiar feeling of what to do when your social anxiety becomes your inner monologue.

We spoke with koleżanka about the many places she’s called home, her favourite memories and dreams, and more.

Malaika Astorga for Also Cool: Hi Kristina, it's nice to e-meet you. Can you tell us a bit about the place you currently call home and what you love most about it?

Kristina: Nice to e-meet you! I currently live in Brooklyn and have been here for about three years now. I love New York City as a home for the reasons why I think many people do - good food everywhere and so many places to go see. The things I love most about it are its opposites to where I grew up in Arizona. While AZ is landlocked, here, I am surrounded by rivers and the ocean. There are four distinct seasons, each with its own unique smells and sites and feelings conjured upon their arrival. I prefer to travel on foot rather than drive to each destination. It helps me slow down (though I am actually an impossibly fast walker) and makes me feel like an actual fixture in space.

Also Cool: How did music enter your life? What kind of music did you listen to growing up, and how did that transform into your own music-making?

K: Neither of my parents were musical though my mom is an excellent dancer. But my mom's dad and his whole family are very musically and artistically inclined. When I was about five, we lived with him for a short time. When he'd babysit us, he would have my brother and I sing on his karaoke machine. I think things just evolved from there. I ended up singing "Frosty the Snowman" that year for his Polka club's Christmas party, and my mom eventually signed me up for piano lessons.

I picked up his grandfather's accordion right after high school and taught myself how to play. A lot of the 3/4 waltz-time signatures employed by Polka and by the stylings of learning the accordion that way informed my writing and still does today.

I started getting into punk around the end of middle school and into high school. It was important for me to see women in my favourite bands like The Cramps, Bikini Kill, and Vice Squad. Even Gwen Stefani in early No Doubt revealed the possibilities of power to me and how I could harness my own.

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AC: I'm always interested in local music / creative scenes. Was there a scene in the different places you lived? What was it like?

K: I started playing some shows and busking in a folk-punk band in Phoenix when I was 19, then moved to Omaha for about a year. When I returned, the music scene in Phoenix felt electrified. I was living in Tempe going to college at the time, and there were house shows abound and dance parties in backyards. Unfortunately, there weren't many medium-sized venues to play, so most things centred around DIY spaces downtown, makeshift house venues or strange bars throughout the metropolitan area.

We would spend every weekend at Long Wong's in Tempe for whatever friend had a monthly residency. The Trunk Space was the apex of the arts community in Phoenix, a haven for all. For the most part, I felt the scene was supportive, not very competitive throughout the years. It was rare to me that you'd see a band trying to "be" anything. A lot of folks just came as they were, and in my opinion, some of the best bands I've ever seen were Phoenix bands. Being surrounded by the desolation of heat, endless space, and depressing track home developments only encourages a thriving community of wonderfully weird and innovative makers. They are all trying to reinvent their space out of necessity and find safety in their expression.

AC: I love how you describe your memories. I really relate to having an in-between existence, and I also hold on to vivid memories after struggling with PTSD-related disassociation. One of my favourite things is to think of special moments, similar to how you described 7th ave, Darlings and Barton Springs. Can you tell us a bit more about each one of those memories and why you chose to focus on those moments in particular?

K: Thank you for sharing! I think it's so important to develop those tools for grounding.

I wrote the lyrics while back in Phoenix the last Christmas before the pandemic hit. I was walking from 7th st to 7th ave on Roosevelt, home to an essential and transformative Phoenix arts community that has slowly been displaced to foreign-invested luxury development. I was walking and thinking about all the times I had walked or driven through there for the past fifteen years. It felt familiar even though so much had changed. I started thinking about "place" and "home," and the other two memories mentioned felt most determining in parcelling out definitions.

I have a memory of going to Darlings after getting off work serving in Tribeca. I had just settled into the first few months of really living in NYC without touring and visiting Phoenix and found myself overwhelmed by the brevity of time and all the places I had been that past year. Without even thinking, I found myself fully sprinting home, this new home, like it was the only way to expel that energy.

The other memory of Barton Springs was this beautiful day on tour, serendipitously running into another band we had previously toured with and going down to the water together. A rope was tied to the top of a tree, and people were trying to see how high they could climb before swinging back into the water. I have gone to the springs almost every time I am in Austin on tour, and therefore it feels constant to me during those periods of constantly moving.

AC: How have you been able to find a sense of home throughout all of the different places and spaces you've experienced?

K: My instinct is to say "time and familiarity," but I don't necessarily think that's always true. There are many unfamiliarities while travelling that I find exciting and even comforting, and that feel like a home place. There is a discovery of home in people I feel safe with and establishing a home within myself. This has been the most important place for me recently. Maybe that is how I find a sense of home elsewhere if that makes sense.

AC: Who are you listening to right now? Any local artists or friends who you think deserve more recognition?

K: So a thing about me…I don't actually listen to music that often. I know it sounds silly, but I feel really easily overwhelmed by music sometimes. I can be too stimulating, emotionally or otherwise. I used to listen a lot while driving or on the train, but now I don't travel like that as much. I tend to enjoy the sounds of the city while walking. I like when you can hear overtones and harmonies between dissonant or ambiguous city sounds.

BUT there are a ton of artists I wish one million people could hear; I really don't know where to begin! My bandmate Ark is a wild multi-instrumentalist and plays as Like Diamonds. They write about sci-fi, technology, and time and are so exciting to see live. Herbert Walker's Francis Bartolomeo is one of the best writers I think I have ever heard; that band is a true gem. Alassane creates compositions that will blow your mind; I don't know how he does it. Gabi Jr. is a favourite. They just put out a song a month or two ago that I listened to incessantly as I was driving around Phoenix during my first visit back since being vaccinated. I think it captures so much of the sentiment of cruising around when it first starts getting warm after spring. They are also a sometimes member of the koleżanka live band in Phx. Anna See also makes appearances as the koleżanka bassist. They are one of my favourite guitar players (and bassists); I truly cannot wait to see what they make next. There are new bands/artists out of Phoenix now that are so cool, like Glixen and Veronica Everheart. Also not an AZ or NYC local, but I do listen to RNIE quite often. Lamont makes music I can comfortably do just about anything (or nothing at all) to and feels both moving and soothing.

AC: Tell us a bit about your upcoming album and what you have planned for 2021.

K: When I started this iteration of solo work in 2016, a lot of writing was centred around personal musings and catharsis, or deep and sometimes painful exploration of parts of self as a genesis for music. I was also exploring creatively what I wanted and enjoyed about instruments that were fairly new to me, like guitar and drum machines.

I started writing some of the earliest material for this new record in December 2018 after coming off a tour. Ark and I finished almost everything for it in March of 2020, right before the pandemic hit. This record is a divergence in that I was feeling more confident as a musician and ready to truly just have some fun and push myself into more sonic exploration.

I'm just so excited for the record to live in the world after all this time! But, I'm not sure what the rest of 2021 will hold. It was so amazing to tour again. I absolutely love touring, but that still feels like such a difficult thing to navigate. After last year, a part of me wants to wait to allow things to happen rather than forcing the hand.

AC: Last but not least, can you share one of your favourite memories or dreams with us?

K: There was a dream I had some years ago that I can still remember vividly. There was a channel of water running underneath a canopy of trees that arched over it. There were houses with gardens that faced the water on one side of the channel, and an ocean sat on the other side. I was soaring over the channel and underneath the canopy, slowly shifting downward to touch the water, then floating back up again. I suppose I felt like a bird, but I don't remember anything about my body in the dream, or maybe my body was never actualized. All I remember was feeling wholly calm. I thought of nothing, just repeating the motion of touching the water and rising again, and the world around me felt very serene. It is one of my favourite dreams.

Watch “In A Meeting” below

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Malaika Astorga is the co-founder of Also Cool. She is a Mexican-Canadian visual artist, writer, and communications specialist currently based in Montreal.

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