Q&A: BUZZ! If We Started Society Again, Would We Make the Same Mistakes On Another?
“IF WE STARTED SOCIETY AGAIN, WOULD WE MAKE THE SAME MISTAKES ON ANOTHER?” — is only one of the questions that singer-songwriter and producer BUZZ calls us to ponder in her new EP, On Matters Of Searching. If you find your mind wandering to different dimensions, thinking about the rules of time, then BUZZ is the artist you’ve been waiting for.
Hidden just under the radar, with platinum songwriting credits for Joan, Hey Violet, and even Katy Perry, BUZZ needs no proof that she is well-deserving of a stage of her own. The journey to releasing her enchantingly unique and genreless music is nothing short of a gift to the world. Her sweet, haunting melodies and sonic instrumentation take you to a place you may have never thought to go yourself. Her new single, “Statues,” track three of the EP, explores what it is to want to preserve an endless love across time, space, and dimensions. Perfectly mixing electric pop with ancient undertones, BUZZ simultaneously captures the reality of the deadlines of love.
Beginning her songwriting at age seven, BUZZ is no stranger to getting the perfect sound and flipping it into art. Recording in the mountains and using sounds such as dripping icicles, she makes Mother Earth her lifelong collaborator. Finding solace in the unknown, BUZZ encourages her listeners to do the same — to travel past the comfortable, and embrace the strange and undiscovered.
Read on below to hear her talk more about her beginnings, how she remains authentic and how she leans into her inner child and the forces of nature.
LUNA: First, how are you? What are your plans to prepare for your release show?
BUZZ: It’s a whirlwind right now: lining up the … merch designs, building custom stage lights that look like moon rocks… The songs are the easy part at this point. I’ve got these amazing dancers I’m working with as well … It will be the first show where I’m incorporating movement to this degree.
LUNA: Any rituals you have before performing?
BUZZ: My ritual is more of a state of semi-isolation, where the majority of the day I don’t want to meet too many new people or have new conversations. I want to take a morning walk, get my favorite espresso tonic, clear my head, not check emails, listen to ambient music, take a long shower, and spend the day in my skin, not giving too much energy outwardly until the show.
LUNA: Your sound is enchantingly unique and mind-opening — it feels almost other-earthly. Did it take you long to find your sound?
BUZZ: My sound is wildly me coming back to my child self. I used to wander around in the woods and see dead trees with their branches hunched over and imagine they were portals to another planet. I’d rush home and write a short story about two girls falling in love on another planet. Those stories got me in a lot of trouble in my conservative house. I remember laying on the hot Texas driveway [on] summer nights with friends as a 10-year-old and pointing at a star saying, “That’s where I’m from.” All the while, I started playing piano at five and was writing these bizarrely deep and emotive songs. I wrote one when I was seven called “Alone” about wondering if people in the sky could see me down on earth.
The final piece of the puzzle is the fact that I grew up in the church in the Midwest having these deeply spiritual feelings but ultimately feeling repressed, so being open-minded is ultimately a healing response from being limited to one belief system for so much of my early life.
LUNA: You’ve said that you’re inspired by nature and science — have you always been drawn to nature? What was the most memorable moment of realization that nature and everything that it brings is mysterious and extraordinary?
BUZZ: Always. Since my earliest memories I was curious of other life beyond this planet, the disturbing and thrilling cycle of life, and things like time being a dimension our reality is bound to versus how time can be manipulated in space. My dad was really into space so as a kid we were always looking through a telescope and trying to see UFOs.
LUNA: Most people are afraid of the unknown or the outer limits of what is familiar. You seem to have the opposite reaction, welcoming it with arms of curiosity and acceptance. Was this always your perception of the unfamiliar?
BUZZ: Not at all. As a kid I was told so many things were wrong in the church that I was afraid of a lot. But once I was out on my own it became wonderfully liberating to find love and freedom in so many different spaces. Denying myself that kind of learning and adventure growing up made the unfamiliar and the unknown all I wanted to be open to. Everything else was comfort. But the things humans don’t know the answer to are the things that create the most connection to the true nature of existence for me.
LUNA: Explain your process of collaborating nature sounds into your projects. Do you seek out specific sounds or is it a spur of the moment type of thing?
BUZZ: Very spur of the moment. I like driving to new places without GPS, up into the mountains or down the coast or winding through the hills. I love memorizing how I got there and picturing where I am in a bird’s-eye view to get back. I’ll step out at a lookout point, and if there’s sounds to grab then I’ll grab it.
One time I drove an hour to pick up a mannequin to make the “Soul” outfits, and the radio station I had it set on was pure static but it was coming in waves … I recorded a ton from that and ended up using that in the EP too. Creating the EP in the mountains, I had no intention of recording icicles dripping off branches, but the windows were so thin in the cabin that I kept hearing it and it sounded like this amazing texture so I had to grab it.
Photo by Nas Bagado
LUNA: Your music has been described as old-worldly while paying homage to a lot of ancient phenomena and emotions that have slowly become seemingly unreachable to us today. Your song “Statues” is a perfect example of that. Was there anything specific that sparked you to write the track?
BUZZ: It was a mixture of watching Three Thousand Years Of Longing and discovering Imre and Marne van Opstal’s choreography. The EP was wrapped and I was catching up on Fashion Week and I saw the Dior spring/summer show with this insane cave set design and these dancers, and [I] immediately flung myself into the studio and Statues spilled out.
LUNA: Do you have any artist who inspires you the most? Or any other forms of art? Movies or books? Favorite genre?
BUZZ: Movies, paintings, and dance inspire me a lot. On the music side I’m most moved by scoring. The works of Ben Salisbury and Geoff Barrow (Ex Machina, Annihilation), as well as Jóhann Jóhannsson (Arrival), really impact me. I love anything that crawls under my skin and feels haunting but at the same time makes me feel understood.
LUNA: Inviting us into this enchanting world, you place yourself in the shoes of someone else, wanting to preserve their love for eternity in “Statues.” Is this something we can expect more of on the EP?
BUZZ: It’s almost that I’m stepping into my true identity rather than the shoes of someone else. I’m speaking from my inner self in this EP, sometimes as a human, sometimes as an alien, sometimes to AI, sometimes as a being with no form but the scattered space dust across the universe, and sometimes as a philosopher… all things I feel I am inside.
There are songs that paint pictures of a desolate planet that we abandon, that prod at questions I have in regards to if we started society again, would we make the same mistakes on another planet? There are songs that illuminate the molecular connection between us and the stars. There are songs that are more metaphysical about the afterlife and the energy that never dies. There are feelings of a life beyond this reality and beyond time. It’s all simply me speaking my mind.
LUNA: What emotion can we expect to be transported to when we hear this EP for the first time?
BUZZ: On the first listen, transportation,and awakening. You’ll forget what city you’re in, and by the end you’ll forget what planet you’re on.
LUNA: When did you first start writing music for yourself, before writing for others?
BUZZ: I started when I was seven. I would rush home from school every day and for an hour spill out my thoughts on the piano. I would write my songs in journals that piled up inside the piano bench. A lot of my thoughts felt too intense to share so I kept a lot of them to myself.
Waiting for my mom to do yard work to play them loudly, or getting to school early and rushing to the orchestra room to sing my latest song in a tiny practice room with a nicer piano than I had at home. If it felt good, I memorized it. I wrote a song called “Real” when I was nine and performed it at some church talent show and the chorus was literally “You can smile on the outside, is it in you, do you feel it, or is it not real.” Somehow I convinced my mom I was writing Christian music but… it was definitely something else.
LUNA: When did you first start writing songs for and with other artists? You have written songs with a lot of artists, including Joan and Hey Violet — was that your initial goal? How has writing songs for others created this path that you are on now?
BUZZ: Growing up, I certainly always pictured being an artist, but I definitely let the whole “be realistic” toxicity take over. I was getting exposed to this version of the music industry where songwriters were a thriving thing so I kind of prematurely gave up on my inner dream of being an artist and decided I’ll just help other artists make songs. Soon, I was living in LA going to the studio every day, working with artists, and gaining traction as a writer. All the while, producing in secret. I wanted to become a chameleon in every different artist’s world so I could write anyone their “hit” but it became increasingly challenging for me to completely abandon my taste and instincts for a more “commercial” idea.
I was the girl who never liked top 40 growing up, and here I was trying to make it. And I ended up making it! It was a gift in so many ways. Making songs that so many people love… that’s beautiful. After a while I just found new ways to feel like I’m really bringing me to the table when I collaborate. I still love working with other artists, but what inspires me has evolved.
Photo by Adolf Vatnikaj
LUNA: Was supporting Tove Lo your first tour experience? What was that like, and are you itching to tour more?
BUZZ: It was! I can’t wait to tour more! It was wild because Tove Lo was a massive inspiration to me in my early songwriting days out in LA. Lady Wood, front to back, was the coolest pop production I had been exposed to in my whole life, so it was kind of like a bucket list feeling to share the stage with her.
LUNA: Your music is very intentional, natural, and rare. Do you ever find moments where that is difficult? To create something that is completely authentic to you?
BUZZ: It’s funny, complete authenticity should be the easiest thing, and we shut ourselves down all the time. We filter ourselves, second-guess ourselves. I think it takes an internal toll sometimes if I’m getting caught up in the numbers or the reaction not meeting a certain expectation, then I have to actively recenter myself and get back to what I would do without thinking about if it will be loved. Which seems wild because of course I want my art to be a positive thing in this world and to help people like it helps me, but to get that type of thing I have to be extremely selfish in my vision, which can be scary.
Coming from the pop songwriting world where there’s prompts and briefs and boundaries and endless A&R notes, it can be easy to doubt my vision, but ultimately I know that my instinct is the most important opinion and the only one I need to make changes based on.
LUNA: I’d love to know a little more about your EP. What is the oldest song, or the song you spent the most time writing/producing?
BUZZ: The oldest song was written last June, and that’s “Reality.” The song that took the longest was probably “Different Sun.” I wrote it in 30 minutes but getting the chorus to feel like I’m being slingshotted through oblivion was the real task.
LUNA: I know it is hard to pick favorites, but what is your most precious song?
BUZZ: Oh man, it’s hard to not say “Liberation” because it changed my life, formed the first community of fans around me, healed me, helped so many people… I still get messages about it. I think that song will always be something my inner child wrote for my current self. I’m currently working on an alternative version of it that’s a bit more minimal, [which] I plan to put on the second EP. As far as on this EP, though, my favorite song is “Reality.” It definitely speaks from my past but reaches to the healed version of myself at the same time.
LUNA: On a personal level, how much has your music grown since your first released single, “FTN”?
BUZZ: Oh man, I mean kind of a quick 180 happened from “FTN” being the first song to “Liberation” being the third… Going into the project I knew I wanted it to feel like my favorite sci-fi films had made me feel, but “FTN” started out with this edge that I’ve gladly softened out to a more genuine silhouette sonically.
LUNA: Aside from the genius use of nature itself, is there anything new you experimented with on these eight tracks?
BUZZ: I think the experiment for me was writing and producing this alone and in intentional isolation. Really embracing my instincts to the furthest degrees. It was also the first time I used found sounds for percussion, like in “Tears,” having a neighbor’s hammer through the wall, or using panko crumbs for shakers.
LUNA: I know you include the sounds of life as it exists. Do you record any vocals in these types of places as well? Or instruments? What is the overall recording process for the EP, and is it any different than your previous projects?
BUZZ: While I wrote a lot of the bones of the songs in the mountains with my on-the-go studio setup, I brought everything back to my studio in Silverlake to finish. In some ways the process was pretty similar to past works, except I wanted to feel that journey of going to the mountain, making a cluster of works, and bringing them back. That odyssey felt important.
LUNA: Do you find freedom in producing all of your own music? Do you have any producers that you take inspiration from?
BUZZ: Absolutely! So much freedom! Lorn, Four Tet, Bon Iver, and Sigur Rós are endlessly inspiring me. I’m also very creatively shut down from mimicking so I intentionally get inspired strictly on an emotional level rather than a literal sense.
LUNA: How long did it take you to realize that it was time to release your own music?
On your TikTok preview of “Running - Intro,” you shared how you moved to LA and felt like your voice was not something to be heard. What is your headspace now?
BUZZ: In some ways it took my whole life until I put a release date to my first single. I was terrified of the music industry’s opinions, terrified of it never getting off the ground, terrified it wouldn’t even resonate. It took me realizing that nothing that’s changed my life would exist if those people felt like me and just didn’t do anything about it. Everyone’s afraid their idea won’t work, and then it’s a leap of faith. I think the universe knows how much my essence belongs to music and keeps giving me signs I did the right thing.
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