During her freshman year at Yale, New York native Khatumu was scouted by a member of a collegiate folk group. Like a scene straight out of Pitch Perfect, she heard Khatumu singing through her dorm room wall, knocked on her door and asked her to audition for the group. It was only after exploring music production over quarantine that Khatumu took her up on the offer, auditioning when she returned to campus for her junior year. Her music production skillset, experience in the folk group, and a collegiate songwriting course launched her into a new terrain: a music career.
With several single releases under her belt, Khatumu made the leap from New York to LA once graduating from Yale in 2024. Continuing to regularly release music and play live shows, Khatumu continues to explore the folk space, crafting her own unique sound. Just prior to her show run with PJ Frantz, Khatumu sat down with Poptized to talk about the past, present, and future of her career.
Brigid: Tomorrow is your first show on your Midwest mini tour with PJ Frantz. What are you feeling about these shows, what emotions are you experiencing?
Khatumu: Honestly, I’m pretty stoked. I haven’t been to the Midwest in a long time. I’m super excited to go to Ann Arbor. I haven’t been to Ann Arbor in forever. I’m really, really excited about the Chicago show. It’s like my second biggest listening base, and there are a ton of people that have messaged me saying that they’re coming out to the show, which is really exciting. And even if it’s like one person that I don’t know, it’s like, it’s lit, you know? So I feel really, really excited. I just played at a bar, I opened for a friend recently, and there were very few people there, but it was really cool to have that really intimate crowd setting. I love that kind of stuff too. So yeah, I’m excited to get to go to different places in the US, and like to meet different people, and share my stuff with them.
B: I know you’ve been teasing some unreleased music on socials, so with these shows that you’re doing this week, what track are you most excited to perform live?
K: Yeah, so I’ve got a song called “departure time” that’s coming out April 2nd. I’m so stoked about that. So I’m going to be singing that one live, I’ve never sung it live before. I think that’ll be really fun. I think that there are some people, like specifically the Chicago show, that are coming for that song, which I think is also really fun.
B: “departure time” is about when you moved from New York to LA. I was curious what that was like for you, and how relocating impacted your music?
K: I would say that New York and LA are very different cities. Culturally, they’re very different, but also not that different, in terms of other cities in the US, they’re kind of more like the same world. It’s like a warmer New York, and a bit slower pace. It was a huge shift, I don’t have any family that lives in LA. They all live on the east coast. All of my closest friends live on the east coast. That song, I sort of wrote from a place of being like: I love New York, but if I want to actually seriously pursue music, I kind of have to be in LA. That was just sort of a split decision I made right after I graduated college. My parents were like, why are you going to LA? And I was like, why not? I mean, who even cares? I’m just gonna do it. They were like, well, I mean, if you can sustain yourself. I was like, I’ll be fine, I’ll figure it out, I teach tennis.
B: On the subject of your family, I was going to ask about how they feel about your career. Do they come out to your shows in New York? What’s that like?
K: Well, okay, so my music journey is kind of crazy. I didn’t do music at all until COVID. Nothing. Zero music, no music background. I went to school for history, I studied linguistics. My parents had never heard me sing before, so they were really confused, like super, super confused when I was like: I think I want to go to LA. They were like, what? And I was like, well, over COVID I got really into music production. It was insane. I was doing it for like, eight hours a day because I went to Yale and we got sent home, so I was doing classes online, and then the time that I wasn’t doing that, I was literally just in my room producing. Like I just chose that. It was literally crazy, I just chose it. I did that for like a year and I got kind of decent at it, and so my last semester of college, I graduated in 2024, I took a songwriting class and I wrote the song “hunting days” for that class. It was a class assignment. The professor was like, you need to release this song. And I was like, okay, fine. Then I did, and that sort of changed the trajectory of my life, I guess. I was trying to explain that to my parents, and they support me. They’re just like… they obviously don’t get it. They’d never heard me sing. They were just like, what are you talking about? I was like, just trust me. I had my first show in New York in December, three months ago now, and it was almost sold out. It was at this venue called Mercury Lounge in New York. That was the first show that I’ve ever had that there were like… New York is my biggest listening base because it’s like my hometown, but also it is just my biggest listening base. It’s the most by far. It’s like two times the amount of any other city. And there were like, I want to say like 45 people there that I did not know. That’s crazy for me. That’s insane. And my parents were like, what is happening? And I was like, I told you guys! So, they support me. They want me to have fun. I’m young and they’re like, just do what makes you happy, don’t be dumb about it, just be alive.
B: That must be so cool, going to your shows they can kind of conceptualize it more.
K: For sure. That was kind of cool to have them there, I felt like they felt proud, that’s really nice.
B: Yeah, because that’s such a fulfilling thing. And like you said, your musician origin story is kind of crazy, reading about it I was like, this sounds like something out of like a movie. Someone heard you singing through a wall and recruited you to their group… You got recruited into a folk group, do you think that’s what made you land in the folk sonic space when it came to making your own music?
K: That’s exactly what made land in that space. Basically I was getting obsessed with music production over COVID. I came back to Yale as a junior, and I decided to join that group. Basically my freshman year, I was singing, and she told me to audition for it and I didn’t do it. And then I got back junior year and I was like, damn, maybe I do want to do some music stuff. I auditioned for it and it was like a folk group. I didn’t even like know what folk music was. I was just like okay, there’s a banjo over there, that’s crazy, that seems like some like some Kansas shit. But it’s so lit, it’s so fun. That’s literally the reason why my sound is that way. One hundred percent.
B: Circling back to music production, when I was looking at your YouTube, I was obsessed with that walk through of “hunting days” . I was curious about your motivation to share behind the scenes production content, is making music production accessible something that’s important to you?
K: Well, I think for me, the whole reason why I even started doing the whole music thing in the first place was because of a specific video. Do you know who Dayglow is?
B: Yes, I interviewed him!
K: Literally, the whole reason why I started was because I was sitting in my room, this is so serendipitous, I opened my laptop. I was like, what am I going to do with all my free time? This is like before Dayglow had popped off, he had like 40k monthly listeners, and he was like: I’m gonna do a walk through of my song. I had never even heard of this guy before. I didn’t even know what Logic was. I was like, I’m gonna watch this video. And I did. I was like, I could do that. He was like, yeah, this is what I did. You don’t have to get crazy with it. And I was like, I love him, and I love that he’s showing this. That song has like almost half a billion streams now. And he’s going stem for stem through the song and not gatekeeping it. Like, this is literally so awesome. That’s sick, you know, and I love that sharing vibe. It’s fucking awesome. I’m happy to share that “hunting days” project with literally anyone who wants it, not trying to gatekeep that at all.
B: When it comes to songwriting, do you have a process? Or, what does it look like, and what inspires you?
K: Well, I think one, the folk thing really comes back into play. I really am inspired by storytelling kind of songwriting. I like when there’s a story at play. I think that is really captivating for me. A lot of the songs are sort of grounded in real life events that happened to me or like little stories. I also try to write a lot of stuff that’s not about relationships. I find myself writing things about like, I don’t know, like “departure time” is not about a relationship. I have a lot of other music coming out soon that has nothing to do with love, and it’s like working through my own mind. But, my process is kind of crazy. I always start with acoustic guitar and I find a progression or like a kind of finger style that I like, and I’ll loop that through. And then basically kind of freestyle over it, like freestyle lyrics and melody at the same time until I find something that I kind of like. Then I’ll roll with the story. Like “departure time”, the first lyric is “circling a feeling that I left back in New York” and once that was written, I just was like, okay, let’s just talk about what happened next. I packed up all the bags, and I left.
B: Since you started making music, has your process evolved or do you feel it has stayed relatively the same?
K: No, it’s definitely evolved. Since moving to LA, especially since releasing “hunting days”, I’ve been doing a lot more collaboration with people. It’s less me in my room, writing, a lot of times now it’s me in a room with people, they’re giving progression ideas. And I’m like, I like that, I don’t like that. But still, I am very hands on with it. I produce on all the songs still. I did a lot of the production on “departure time”, I have a few songs coming out that I did a lot of production on, if not most of it. I just cannot forfeit that control, you know? There have been a few back and forth where it’s like, oh, maybe we should do this, let’s do this. And then I’m like, no, unfortunately, this is like my project. This is how I want to sound. I’m also very much this way too because I feel like sometimes people maybe [don’t] take me seriously because I’m a woman who produces. I’m just like, fuck that. I don’t give a fuck if you released X record, cool, good for you. Even if I never get big, this is how I want my music to sound. This is how it’s gonna sound.
B: Especially if you have a vision, and you know you have the capability to see it through. For people who like reading this conversation, how would you describe your sound and your music to someone who’s never heard it?
K: It’s always such a hard question to answer, it’s something that I definitely need to find a better answer for. I would describe it as like electrified folk music.
B: When I was checking out your Spotify, I saw you had a couple artist playlists and I was curious what you’re listening to right now. What’s currently in rotation?
K: Well, I’ve been listening to a lot of Tyler Childers. I love Tyler Childers. I’ve been listening to a lot of this guy called Humble the Great. He’s great. He’s a British guy, oh my god, he’s unreal. I found him this time last year when I was in Ireland, which is just so fitting. I’ve been listening to a lot of Bon Iver. Lola Young. Yana, she’s great. This girl called Tristan, who’s pretty awesome. She’s actually my friend now too. She lives around the block.
B: A good variety, I’ll have to check out the ones I didn’t recognize! To wrap up here, when it comes to your music, what do you hope that listeners take away from it?
K: I think the best messages I ever receive are when people DM me and they’re like, oh, this gave me clarity on X, or I did X thing because I heard your song. That to me is really awesome. You know when you’re having a conversation with your friend and you kind of already know what the answer is? You already know that you should break up with X, or you already know that you should do this. You don’t need them to tell you that, but you kind of need them to guide you to that sort of destination. I kind of want the music to do that, like just help people, you know, be that guiding thing. Because I feel like a lot of music has done that for me. When I know I’ve needed something, I listen. and Even if it’s to devolve further before coming back up, you know what I mean?
Listen to Khatumu here!
