NESYA is making music that won’t stay in one place

Before NESYA was busy recording her debut album in Los Angeles, she was juggling her artistry and budding social media buzz with teaching a third grade class. Eventually, her students found her accounts, along with the music snippets from her videos. “They were really supportive. I would literally be singing to the kids in my class, so they were super into that,” she says with a laugh.

It was only in late 2023 that the Lincoln, Nebraska-born artist started posting the raw tracks she cut in her closet using BandLab and Apple headphones. "I was in an abusive relationship," she explains, offering important context for the anger that shows up in a lot of her music. "I was super going through it, so I was just pumping out EPs and albums with one of my friends who's a producer, Bora Loco." In just a year, NESYA had dropped 60 tracks across a variety of genres from trap to hyperpop.

One of those songs, "delulu," a racing post-punk track initially featured on her Never Truly Happy EP was never released as an official single until about a year later. "I never promoted it, I kind of felt like it was too kind of crazy and weird,” she explained. In 2024, user 6coreyl uploaded a video singing along to the track — from prison. "That was what blew that song like to the roof,” she explains. “That literally changed my life.”

With new management in tow after an indie label deal nearly derailed her early momentum, NESYA calls her upcoming full-length debut album her "shedding phase," built around the year of the snake. And this time, pulling from all of her biggest inspirations at once: Deftones, The Cure, and Sacramento trap alongside Lady Gaga, Kali Uchis, and dark wave; all underpinned by her church roots. “I have a lot of religious trauma from seeing the dark side of the people that are in these institutions, and what they can do to you,” she explains. Raised by a pastor father who regularly performed exorcisms, Nesya led music worship at their local church. And while some of her early fans see her sound as having drifted far from the closet-recording days, Nesya says she's not going back. "I do have a lot of people who are like, ‘just because you moved to LA and started working with real producers, now your music sounds all different. But I don't want to waste any of my potential by locking myself in a box,” she explains.

The album’s first single "Put the Fries in the Bag," a New Wave-adjacent EDM track with a pulsing bassline that drops today, is clear proof of NESYA’s commitment to experimentation. The rest of the album finds her bounding across post-punk, techno, trap, pop, and even trip-hop production. “I love alternative rock, I love trap music, I love pop music, but I also love dark wave goth bands. It’s pretty white male-dominated but I wanted to take those types of beats and do it in a more poppy, R&B kind of way.”

That scrappy, DIY energy has been with NESYA from the start of her career, much of it tracing back to digital platforms like BandLab. “My first couple songs were rough-sounding, but it got better as I was just playing around with it,” she explains. “I always recommend BandLab to people because it’s just so easy to be able to record a song in your closet, on your phone, or with whatever type of equipment you have. I don't know what I would have done without it.”

Even with major label backing and new producers in her back pocket, NESYA has no plans to chase what the industry thinks she should sound like. “I want to make what makes me feel like I want to dance and hopefully that resonates with everybody else,” she explains. “I want them to see me as someone who killed her old self and became who she was meant to be.”

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