NYC Scene Report – KYOSi, Emmrose, & more

This week’s NYC Scene Report features KYOSi getting literary with “Boo Radley,” the “Dangerous Eyes” of Emmrose, Evelyn Brown lamenting not being “Bullet Proof,” and a glitchy visual gem from J Hacha De Zola.

* For her latest single, NYC-based electro-pop artist KYOSi is singing all about her Boo … “Boo Radley,” that is.

Yes, we’re talking about the famous literary character, which KYSOi explains she drew inspiration from for the song, saying, “The second single from my EP, Negative Space, reimagines the character Boo Radley, from To Kill a Mockingbird, as a modern Everyman— a guy who’s a cog in a machine. He learns to love the machine, but is deeply conflicted, too.”

KYSOi continued, adding, “I remember reading the book as a kid, and wanted to know more about Boo Radley. He was mysterious, and relatable somehow. The lyric and production evolved out of thinking about the panic he might feel, the way he might start to internalize the feeling of a captor, either real or perceived. I wanted it to feel frantic.”

Negative Space is available now, and you can listen to “Boo Radley” right here.


* Fifteen year old indie pop artist Emmrose may not be able to get into most music venues in the city, but her voice, and songwriting ability, have a maturity beyond her years.

The LaGuardia High School student, who will be entering her junior year, just released her latest single, “Dangerous Eyes,” which she explained in a statement, saying, “I was in my 8th grade math class when I started writing this song. I wrote the chorus and melody in my math class grid notebook. A group of kids were sitting at a table away from me with this kid that I liked at the time, and he looked at me with this expression that captured how isolated I felt at the time. I wanted so much to be part of that group of kids. Earlier that week I had asked him to have coffee with me, and he replied, ‘Don’t take this personally, but I hate you,’ and just walked away. He never said anything nice, and always left me gasping for breath, thus the lyrics, ‘Hold back that dangerous tongue, that fills the breath of my lungs.’”

“Dangerous Eyes” is off Emmrose’s upcoming debut EP, Hopeless Romantics, due out this summer, and somewhere there’s a kid who hopefully really regrets not getting coffee with her.


* NYC’s indie music scene features a diverse array of genres, but one thing that we don’t have in great abundance is country music. To be fair, our idea of a farm is that tree that grows in Brooklyn.

With that in mind, Evelyn Brown is truly a unique artist for the city – a country singer with roots in Texas who can weave a story of heartbreak over a whiskey while strumming on her guitar.

Brown has been surrounded by music since day one – the daughter of a musician and record producer – and she notes that as a kid she would routinely be “tripping through cables on the way to shower in the morning,” adding, “finding an amp mic-ed in the bathtub was something I became accustomed too … music has been my whole life.”

Now calling NYC home, Brown released a self-titled album May, the latest single off of which is the beautiful “Bullet Proof.”

Click play, and get a little emotional with Evelyn Brown.


* Longtime column favorite J Hacha De Zola released an album titled Icaro Nouveau earlier this year, and like all his projects, it obliterated traditional categorization, so it only makes sense that the visuals for those songs be similarly boundary breaking.

The latest single off Icaro Nouveau is “El Chucho (Hooko),” and for the video J Hacha De Zola teamed up with Euro-glitch artists Remy Joel and Denis Volnov. The result is an extremely wild visual, and musical, treat.

J Hacha De Zola discussed the clip in a statement, saying, “I love glitch art, an exciting art form where digital data is corrupted through the physical manipulation of electronic devices to produce errors or ‘glitches’ for aesthetic visual purposes. The result is distorted, mind bending, or even disturbing, imagery which is why this art form best fits this particular song.”

Click play on “El Chucho (Hooko),” and let J Hacha De Zola, Remy Joel, and Denis Volnov, mess with your mind.


For more of the best of NYC’s indie music scene, come back next Wednesday, and check out the archives for previous columns.