Kississippi
BIOGRAPHY
Zoe Reynolds, the force behind Philadelphia-based indie pop outfit Kississippi, can’t stop making art. As a kid, she sang around her house constantly; when her sister picked up the guitar, 9-year-old Zoe’s mother encouraged her to learn bass so the two would form a band one day. Little did she know that when she sent Zoe off to art school in the big city in 2013, she’d soon leave her studies behind to form a band full time. Two albums, two EPs, and a slew of tours later, Zoe slowed down for once, focusing her boundless energy on generative art practices that can fall away in the rat-race of the music business.
Sometimes, that became an unhealthy obsession: Zoe spent a whole December in her house, painting a dozen self-portraits, finding too much fault with each of them and fixating over the disconnection she felt with the figures she produced, staring back at her. However, Reynolds also finished Kississippi’s latest release, a four-track EP showcasing her mature, pop-informed songwriting entitled Damned if I do it for you.
As long as Kississippi has been a band, Zoe has written pop with a latent emo inflection, owing to her years spent listening to everything from Death Cab For Cutie to the major pop punk and emo revival acts of her young adulthood. As she acclimated to the Philadelphia music scene while in art school, a legendary emo revival was in full swing; her punk-informed pop spoke to a broad audience. Her last album, 2021’s Mood Ring, leaned even harder into electropop, never totally eschewing those emo influences but peppering them more delicately throughout a synth-laden project. That aesthetic is even more developed on Damned if I do it for you, with Zoe careening between power pop on “Jesus Freak” and dance pop on “Last Time” with uncanny comfort.
Damned if I do it for you refers to a recurring experience Zoe has faced in her adult relationships, trying to navigate romantic, friendly, and professional relationships in earnest and going out of her way to try making them work without all the necessary safeguards. “Smaller Half” charts the aftereffects of those arrangements, visiting Zoe in a moment where she admits she doesn’t know who she is anymore without her counterpart, even if she knows she’s better off. “Last Time” recounts witnessing an ex-partner romantically at her show with someone new, the ensuing heartbreak, and a sense of resignation: she knew what she was getting into by playing that gig. What could she expect?
EP centerpiece “Jesus Freak” marks Zoe’s full-fledged embrace of guitar pop, a direction she’s explored before, but never with this level of commitment. Centered on a fictional love story with some echoes from her life, “Jesus Freak” explores the gloom-lifting experience of obsession with a new crush, making ample room for anticipation and passion. It’s bright, celebratory, anxious, and, most importantly, composed cathartically; her command of tension and release is stronger than ever.
“Bird Song” fittingly takes a birds-eye view of Zoe’s mind and circumstances as she wrote the EP, a mentally strenuous period of negotiating past hurts, new pains, reverberating mistakes, and the need to forge ahead. On one hand, she expresses gratitude for the experiences who’ve helped make her into the person she is today. That person wants to write children’s books, dabble in illustration, and paint more elaborate works than ever before. “Bird Song” is the kind of exercise that grants Zoe permission to settle with herself, declare her intent to proceed forward, and lean into the generative artistic practice she’s built for. As such, Damned if I do it for you is a departure in style but a return to form, an off-ramp from the unbalanced life she led into something better suited to her distinct talents.
Like previous Kississippi projects, Zoe has done the heavy lifting herself, but she’s embraced more collaboration than ever in the writing process. When she felt stuck, she brought her drafts to Dan Campbell (The Wonder Years, Aaron West and the Roaring Twenties) for workshopping, then brought those drafts to Illuminati Hotties’ own Sarah Tudzin (boygenius, Speedy Ortiz) and Maddie Ross for finishing touches and studio time; their influence can be heard on “Jesus Freak,” “Last Time,” and “Smaller Half.” The seeds of “Bird Song” also came together during that time and ultimately sprouted with Andy Park (Future Teens, Death Cab For Cutie).Damned if I do it for youdrops July 26th via Amuse; the new single “Last Time,” is out everywhere now.
