Lia Pappas-Kemps feels the walls closing in on the scuzzy “Towers”

On the track, frenzied lyrics meet fuzzy guitars, the raw, textured sound a representation of the panic that sets in when a deep-rooted relationship feels due to meet its end. As Pappas-Kemps’ observations confirm the worst she sings, “Hand me that flare gun / this is the 11th hour / I’ll send a prayer up,” clinging onto the last of a love she knows might already be over. The result is an intimate piece of alt-rock that feels just as blistering as it does vulnerable.

The song tracks “the tipping point of a relationship when everything feels like it’s slipping. That last-ditch effort to preserve what you had with someone,” Pappas-Kemps explains. Typically a solitary songwriter, 21-year-old Pappas-Kemps took a different approach with the track. “I wrote this in my living room in Montreal with my cousin Elia. He produced the whole album, but this is the only song on the record where we started it all together,” Pappas-Kemps says. “[Writing with another person] is not a common starting point for me. It’s usually very private and I always do it alone, but I feel like this song was more born out of having fun.” That shift in process, she says, helped shape the sound. “Working from the ground up on the music rather than narratively made it more intricate, sonically. We took more chances production-wise. The production became a part of the songwriting.”

The making of “Towers” might have been a different experience for Pappas-Kemps, but working with her cousin was nothing new. “I was making songs with my cousin as a teenager,” she says. “I'm gonna work with him for the rest of my life.” Beyond family, Pappas-Kemps also enjoys working alongside friends, one of whom made the visualizer for “Towers.” These collaborations, she says, are an important part of her work. “I feel like it makes everything that much more seamless, artistically… I don't need to worry if [my music is] going to be received in the way I want it to, because you already have a language with people in your life.”

Previously known for her acting efforts in the show Anne With An E, Pappas-Kemps made the switch to music after releasing singles like “Object at Best” and “Sad In Toronto” over the pandemic. ​​”I stopped entirely after the show was done, but I did get the following from it, which was super crazy.” The online following, she says, was a catalyst in her making the switch to pursue her true passion. “I didn't really think about its impact entirely then.”

While she admires the opportunities her social following has given her, Pappas-Kemps still has her eyes on the music. “I think at this point in time, all I really want is to write records and make albums and, ideally, tour them. Social media is such an amazing tool, but I think it sometimes inhibits the art of going away and making a record, and I really wanna preserve that.”

Now, she is doing exactly that. “Towers” comes just ahead of the release of her debut album Winged, arriving on March 13th. Coming just 2 years after her debut EP Gleam, the project already shows her evolution as an artist. “I think the EP, songwriting-wise, stuck to a form. I experiment with form on these songs a bit more, and I think a few of them are pretty formless. That just made sense as a step for me as a songwriter.”