An Interview with Pretty Roach, July 2025
How would you describe your sound? What interests you about your genre(s) specifically?
I think the sounds that intrigue me and that I attempt to emulate are different than what comes out. Like a game of telephone on the playground with the metal tubes no one knew what to do with. I like indie rock, alternative hip hop, and hyperpop then put my own Pretty Roach spin on it. My stuff tends to be real electronic and dreamy with sinister undertones sometimes.
Who/what inspires your music?
I’m inspired by sunlight peaking thru sugar maple trees. sticky tables at the back of arcade pizza parties. swing sets in peculiar places. i want to be the musician child me daydreamed about but 15 year old me needed. I’m inspired by NoName, Mitski and Gorillaz.
If you could open for any musician/band, who would it be?
I’d love to open for Wallice, it’s definitely a goal of mine I just love her modern rock sound. On the other side I wanna open for 100 gecs. My next Ep, Partybot Transvestite Style, is gonna lean in more into dance electronic and experimental hyperpop. So I think that mesh well with the 100 gecs crowd while also being different.
What does making music mean to you? What got you into it/keeps you continuing?
How do you keep yourself motivated and inspired/how do you work through creative blocks?
I try to make rest important. Before I used to spiral along with everyone over the algorithmic nature of being a musician and the fear of running out of time. But now i try to reframe it positively. If i’m not having a lot of ideas or drive then i just need a break and allow something else to come through or simply do nothing. I used to be very scarcity minded so it was like every idea was my last. I’ve worked a lot on my anxiety though with meds, meditation and therapy. So now I try to tell myself i’m a flowing river of ideas in tune with the universe and if the antennas not connecting it’s okay to wait.
What is your creative process like? Is it more organized & session based or more sporadic and fleeting?
At first it was kinda formulaic. I’d take one of my poems, pick up my ukulele or keyboard and fiddle with them until I found a melody. It’s much more random now but intentional. Sometimes I’ll have the beat and start flowing gibberish then put it to words. Other times I’ll be struck with an epiphany over a feeling or an experience and just start writing wherever I am. I love repeating and exhausting a song over and over so sometimes I’ll be like ‘what if this track was hit with a pretty-roach-inator?’ it’s often completely different from whatever song inspired it but it gets me there.
Tell me about your most recent EP! What was the process behind making it? What did you want to convey through it, and how did the songs turn from ideas into reality?
My most recent ep was LUVSIK. It was a collection of songs I wrote between 15-20. For years, friends were begging me to post them but I didn’t think they were good enough. I still had an outdated view of music and thought you needed studio money or record deal to put anything out. Luckily I meant some talented musicians who were producing out of their bedroom. Their stuff sounded so cool and professional to me, I wanted to do it too. I’m a hopeless romantic and sensitive person so the EP originally started as a reflection on my relationships. On the way I used to dive head first and betray myself. I wanted to portray love as a disease affecting my wellbeing and not perfect romance. While making it my car broke down and my mom had to give me rides to work. We started really reconnecting more than before and she told me so much I didn’t know about her past of surviving war and immigrating to a country she didn’t know or speak the language of. My mom’s always been an intensively supportive figure in my life and one of those rare adults who reflects and changes if you genuinely ask her to. She has these morale-rising war general-esque speeches inside of her she’d just gift me everyday and I started to realize that this was the true backdrop to Luvsik. Our conversations and the way her love gave me the strength to love myself and the support to not rely on fleeting romantic daydreams. I made our relationship the focal point instead and the cover is her holding me as a kid, in my sister's room, i think my sister even took the picture. I was more of a daddy’s girl growing up so this represented a return to her (my mom) and a return to self. She loves the EP and has to be like, half the streams of Suburbia(Normal). That track is like an indie rock musing on fake friends. Tailspin and Remission are my reckoning with religion after being raised catholic but being shunned for my queerness and blackness. Psych Ward Socks was based off a poem i wrote in the ward. I self-admitted. It wasn’t even necessarily my lowest point. I just knew I needed help and had to destroy every identity, thought process, and coping mechanism that no longer helped build a brighter and more loving me. They have a controversial history, but in my personal experience, it truly did help. I got diagnosed with BPD, got meds that worked, was able to start DBT therapy and graduated from the inpatient program. I wrote it from perspective of feeling like a lost and confused failure but I see now that was just a rebirth into a more healthy, stable and creative me.
Which song of yours do you consider to be your favorite? Why?
My favorite song of mine is an unreleased track called Anger. It came to me early in the morning and is about the anger passed down in my family. I was inspired by a poem in Catherine Lacey’s story Cut. “if you’re raised with an angry man in your house. there will always be an angry man in your house” I’ve thought about that quote in her 2019 story for years but my song just came to me a month ago. I was fascinated by this concept of being shackled with a representation of an emotion. the first and last line of my song is ‘there’s a big angry african man who won’t fuckin leave my treehouse’ i liked this idea of a kid trying different tactics to rid of him, of their parents even trying, but the cycle continuing anyway. it’s my first song that’s more folky/country. I don’t think it’ll be on my next EP cause it doesn’t exactly fit but i’m excited to release it in the future. I have a clear visual for the music video of a black kid dragging a wagon of the man everywhere begrudgingly. It’s a song that was just so satisfyingly on point to what I imagined at the start, it gets me pumped.
Tell me about the zine! Why was emphasizing the lyrics/putting them in multiple formats (both music and in print) important to you?
The mini zine doesn’t actually have the song lyrics but i should add it hahaha. It came about as just a short mixture of prose and poetry on the inspirations for each song and where I was coming from. I wanted something I could handout at shows that give listeners a lil something extra on who I was and what Luvsik was about. i wanted it to feel personal and hand-made so i put each one together myself before handing them out at shows. it’s like a fun and creative way to explain the EP and show people what i’m about. The pictures on it is just a shoot my best friend and i did impromptu the day i got my camera but i loved them. I love going mixed media so it’s got a crafty feel, my art is very crayon based so there’s lots of that in pairing with markers too. The visuals of my music and art tend to be playful and childlike whimsy.
What is your current big goal? What does the future hold/what are you working towards right now?
My current goal is to start a Queer Music Collective in my local area. Get a group of people with like-minded goals who want to trade skills and help each other with promos, live shows, jam together and stuff like that. I think as a whole we gotta get back to homemade early internet. i think there’s a reason lots of people feel it was more fun and authentic. I just wanna get some creatives together to grind on our local scene and grow together. I’ve also been applying to music residencies, and I got an audition with a Seattle based one so I hope that’s my next adventure!
www.instagram.com/cybertrieseverything/
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