oktehya  – 4L

Today, the Pacific Northwest’s exciting rising star oktehya (fka TEHYA) releases “4L,” a song about toxic-adjacent, all-consuming loyalty, which is featured on her next project, the 5-track a changeable feast EP, to be released via Neon Gold Records / Futures ✦ on August 14th.

Besides creating her own new music, oktehya can be found in a starring role in Love Spells’ video for his latest song “Keep It To Yourself”, and instantly step inside her creative process via this candid video interview from @ART which offers a rare, unfiltered glimpse into the mind behind the work.

Earlier, she released “catch//release” which is one of the most quietly devastating pieces of songwriting in recent memory, and it arrives wrapped in the kind of effortless, genre-fluid production that makes oktehya genuinely unlike anyone else working right now. “oooo you hooked me good / am I doing this right? / looked straight in its eyes / now I’m too attached too attached to / catch and release”

Growing up in the Pacific Northwest at the intersection of her Cherokee, Filipino, and Scotch-Irish roots, oktehya was shaped by music from birth; her father is a local legend funk drummer, and she forged herself a fiercely self-made path, as well. She left home at 16, found her people in Seattle’s Capitol Hill underground rap scene, and taught herself Pro Tools and FL Studio by sitting in on sessions until someone handed her the keys. She plays guitar, keys, and drums. She writes 100% of her own toplines and lyrics. She is, in the most literal sense, self-made.

She is also, for context, already a Neon Gold Records artist, the label that launched Charli XCX, Tove Lo, MARINA, and Christine and the Queens. She has graced the cover of NME. She has landed on the cover of Spotify’s Fresh Finds. Earlier releases include the acclaimed “the patriot” a song that began as a meditation on Indigenous visibility and became, in the current climate, something far larger, and earlier songs such as “spoons for sweets,” and “trap door.” “4L” is the further opening of her new era.

#oktehya