Satya breaks free from harmful patterns in "Circles"

Grappling with the balance between emotional immersion and subsequent release, L.A.-based Satya leans into nocturnal slide guitar, swelling organ, and heavy reverb on "Circles" that bleeds through an otherwise stagnant aridity. Ruminative and encompassing in its opening moments, the single serves as the north star for the rest of her debut record, Yellow House, arriving via Giant Music, home to artists like Isabella Lovestory and Empress Of.

"I wrote ‘Circles,’ and it really opened up the concept for the entire album,” Satya shares. “I wrote it very naturally, without thinking too much about it. It was just something I was doing for myself. Then I realized, ‘Oh, this is actually opening up an entire world’. It’s probably the track I am the most proud of. There was a lot of trial and error with it. I started to write it in 2020 with two producers, and then we put it down for a while, and I later brought it back into the studio with Colin Linden, who engineered it.”

Accordingly, the track’s focus on metamorphosis through small choices and repeated mantras, rather than one epochal moment, is a byproduct of the growth she experienced through various seasons of her life. “When I first wrote ‘Circles’, I felt really raw about everything. Honestly, it was coming from a more angry place. By the time we really got to finishing it, it was years later. Even with re-recording the vocals, I can hear that I was more distant from my anger. It also helped me explore feelings more through instruments. Every song that followed was born through that process, sonically, it became the blueprint for how I wanted the other songs to feel since I wanted everything to live in the same world.”

While the careening rhythmic pragmatism of artists like Mazzy Star and Lucinda Williams influenced her songwriting and subsequent delivery at the time of production, it was particularly acoustic conventions that poured most directly into her instrumental style. “It just started as a stripped-back acoustic song. I knew the pace it would have and I also knew I wanted slide guitar. Once we got to working on the bridge, that was where I realized I wanted a mixture of country elements with some soul influence.”

The project’s continuous sense of arresting ambience was derived from the tantric capabilities of analog: “I love analog. Some of the album was actually recorded on it and I definitely feel like I’m moving more into that lane. That sound just feels more organic and natural to me."

Beyond production choices, Satya was pleased with the project's non-‘radio-ready’ approach. While her previous EPs were made more tenuously with audience perception in mind, Yellow House emerged from an incubation period during a quiet couple of years in Oakland. “It’s just been really healing to be recording it and rolling this out,” she concurs. “Even holding space for other people to share their own stories and how they relate to the work has felt really rewarding. I had an interview recently where someone said that the project definitely felt heavy, but there was a sense of hope running through it, too. It was the first time I’d heard someone put it like that, and it actually surprised me. I think a lot of people listen and immediately describe it as heavy or intense.”

While ‘heavy’ or ‘intense’ are feasible descriptors of the record’s dominant tonality, Yellow House is more than an iterative chronicle of the narrator bottoming into the same quicksand. Satya repeatedly emphasized that it’s equally a story of love, growth, and healing. “I was really coming into myself at the time, doing a lot of shadow work, and really looking back on my upbringing to see how my adult life was being affected,” she reprises. “I just wanted to be so deeply honest in each song and then ultimately treat that as a release.”