Brooklyn-based musician Elise Okusami has been making music since an early age, cycling through a series of bands throughout the years. In 2016, she started putting songs out as Oceanator, and the following year released the project’s debut EP. On the side, she also drums for bands that include the Adventures Of The Silver Spaceman and Vagabon (she plays on the latter’s Infinite Worlds). In April, Okusami is releasing the second Oceanator EP, which is called Lows, an accurate title for the roller coaster of emotions that it exhibits.

Lead single “Mistakes” is red-hot in its intensity — each instrument sounds like it’s projected from underneath a layer of volcanic ash. On the song, Okusami chronicles a time when she was haunted by the specter of a bad relationship. She doesn’t mince words: “I had to learn the hard way that you were nothing special/ And I feel stupid ’cause I’m missing something that was never real,” Okusami sings, weighed down by the knowledge that this isn’t the first time she’s fallen for the trap of loving someone who was incapable of reciprocating. “I can finally see/ You offered nothing to me,” she closes, shutting the book on a period of instability.

“The music for ‘Mistakes’ was written mostly in my head on a train ride home from a show. Once I got home and picked up my guitar to record it before I forgot it, the words ‘I’m making the mistakes…’ just came out of my mouth,” Okusami says of the track. “I had been thinking a lot about how I was staying up too late or staying out too late and not really spending any meaningful time with my friends. It’s also about letting your happiness depend on someone else who turns out to be a jerk or even just not the person you thought they were, and realizing you shouldn’t be relying on someone else for your happiness in the first place.”

Listen below.

TRACKLIST:
01 “Coming Home”
02 “Mistakes”
03 “Not Around”
04 “Tell Me”
05 “Inhuman”

TOUR DATES:
03/08 Brooklyn, NY @ Muchmores w/ Izzy True
03/09 Brooklyn, NY @ 603 (Solo) w/ Anna Altman, Fred Beans, Mallrat and Dark Tones
04/07 Richmond, VA @ My Noodle And Bar
04/09 Raleigh, NC @ Slim’s
04/13 Philadelphia, PA @ House Show
04/15 Brooklyn, NY @ Alphaville w/ Goodie, Haybaby
04/16 Littleton, NH @ The Loading Dock
04/21 Detroit, MI @ Ghost Light

The Lows EP is out 4/13 via Tiny Engines. Pre-order it here.

CREDIT: Alex Joseph