Alt-pop star-in-waiting Tehya has a knack for writing lyrics with striking imagery. “When I last seen you / Still sticking raspberries around all your fingers,” she sings in the opening lines of ‘Peach Pit’, her lilting contribution to ‘Bose x NME: C24’. “Having a visual helps me paint a picture for myself,” the LA-based singer-songwriter explains. “Most of the music I plan on putting out is definitely inspired from a visual of a situation or a moment in time, not so much the feeling.”
‘Peach Pit’ merges Tehya’s unique voice – slightly raspy and grungy, bursting with emotion in each note – with lo-fi, warped guitars that sound like they’ve been baked in the summer sun. It began life during a session with her main producer, Cameron Hale (Claud, Fletcher) and that very simple fruit-based image, which came to Tehya’s mind while sitting on a couch at the back of the room. “I don’t know if that’s super random,” she laughs. “I used to put raspberries on my fingers – and olives! That used to be a really good time.” Quickly, the origins of the song expanded from a seemingly throwaway memory to something deeper, delving into the artist’s experience of childhood.
Despite its first impressions as a lively, sun-kissed anthem, ‘Peach Pit’ has much more depth to it. “It presents more upbeat, but it’s definitely quite vulnerable, I would say,” Tehya explains. Although she says she finds it impossible to write when she’s feeling sad or in situations that make her feel gloomy, she wants to find other ways to share “more intimate parts” of her mind and life. “It’s just never gonna come from the rawest form of it. When I’m going through it, I probably wouldn’t want to write a song about it.”
Growing up in Seattle, she taught herself instruments including bass, drums and guitar. Aged 16, she moved out of her parents’ home and into an artist compound in the city’s Capitol Hill neighbourhood. There, she was able to witness both the good and bad sides of life as a musician. “There were definitely people who have really gone through a lot and were really leaning on music to get away from what they were going through,” she says. “I watched a lot of people sink. On the flip side, there were just a lot of bops that came out of that house. We’d throw parties and just listen to the music everybody was making. It was sick.”
It was only in March 2024, though, that Tehya took all she’d been learning and creating and properly showed it to the wider world via her official debut single, ‘Crowd Pleaser’, a snappy banger that recalls early Halsey. “Music is a very, very core part of who I am, and so the thought of sharing it, initially, was very daunting,” she says. “It’s putting myself out there more than I’ve ever put myself out there.” Getting comfortable with that idea took time, as did understanding what her sound was and what parts of her she was ready to share with the world.
It’s early in the 23-year-old’s journey but, so far, there’s a theme of very laid-back, organic success to her story. Even her inclusion on the ‘Bose x NME: C24’ feels like something that’s come to her naturally. She earned her spot by entering BandLab’s initiative to land a spot on the mixtape. “I submitted and I was just like, ‘Sure, why not try?’ But I really didn’t think anything was gonna come of it. Looking back on [myself] from four years ago… she would freak the fuck out right now.”
It’s fitting that her entry into the mixtape should come via music creation app BandLab, given the impact it had on her music when she was first trying to make the sounds in her head a reality. “At the time, I had no equipment, no nothing and I had no understanding of how to record myself, but I knew I loved music,” she explains. “BandLab really just gave me a very easily accessible means of expressing myself and making it a fully realised version.”
With a “bad bitch”, rap-tinged second single ‘Biscuits And Gravy’ now out in the world, Tehya is looking ahead to a future full of more musical experiments and genre-hopping. She describes music as one of her main forms of communication and hopes to fill those missives with a wide range of sounds in her journey to come. “I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to identify with one aspect of artistry,” she says. “I want to explore all genres – I think they’re all important and vital in different realms of emotion.”
Stay tuned to NME.com/C24 for the latest on the return of the iconic mixtape
[Editor’s note: NME and BandLab are both a part of Caldecott Music Group]
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