FEATURE:
Spotlight
Tiny Habits
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THIS is a band that…
I have been excited about for a long time now. I am spotlighting them now because their album, All for Something, was released last month. It is an extraordinary debut from the U.S. trio. Tiny Habits formed in Boston in 2022. They consist of Berklee College of Music students Cinya Khan and Maya Rae and alumnus Judah Mayowa. Their debut E.P., Tiny Things, was released in April 2023. I am going to get to an assortment of interviews with the group. I will end with a review of their phenomenal debut album. First, I want to bring in an interview from The Gryphon:
“2023 was a year for trios. Boygenius made their big comeback; MUNA reached new heights; and with Tiny Habits’ debut EP releasing in April of that year, they proved that three is the magic number. On the aptly named Tiny Things, Judah Mayowa, Cinya Khan and Maya Rae cemented themselves as the future of folk, finding themselves part of Spotify’s ‘Juniper: Artists to Watch’ series.
On May 24th, Tiny Habits released their debut album, All for Something; I caught up with the band two days before the album’s release, breaking down their key inspirations, creative processes, and more.
One of the things that interested me about you guys is that you’re not the ‘traditional’ image of folk music; two of you are women, and two of you are people of colour. You intersect so many marginalised identities, but you’re thriving in the folk scene. Is this something that affects you, or something you think about when you make music?
Judah: It’s on my mind almost every day, because most of the folk scene is white, but I think it’s awesome, especially because our fanbase and the people who come to our shows are really diverse. It’s very cool, but also a little scary.
Cinya: It’s interesting to me that this is the first time that’s really been brought up in an interview! I feel like that’s because the music doesn’t really bring that up, as if it speaks for itself. I like the idea that it can be the fabric of who we are but not at the forefront.
Yeah, that reminds me of Laufey, who you’ve collaborated with before – her song ‘Letter to My 13 Year Old Self’ is centred around race and gender, and what it’s like to be othered, but everything else is her just doing her own thing, I think it’s really cool you’re both doing that!
Maya: Thanks! We love her!
How do your collaborations generally come about?
M: A lot of it happens through social media; that’s how we started out, just posting videos online, and it’s led to us collaborating with a lot of really cool people. Most of it is through Instagram and TikTok, like opening for Gracie Abrams and Noah Kahan.
C: We actually met Kacey [Musgraves] in real life first; we played a show in New York where we were on the same bill as her, and we became friends.
M: Social media is a very powerful tool! It has its pros and its cons, but it’s very powerful.
So, the album comes out in two days! I’m reviewing it, and it’s all I’ve been listening to all day, I love it. When did everything start to fall into place?
C: A lot of the songs have been around for a while, and we compiled them all together last summer. We flew out to LA to meet with Tony Berg, our producer, and that’s when it began! We had a couple of days with him, not recording anything, just singing the songs, and focusing on what the album needed to feel like a full body of work. We finished it in January, so it was a really long process. We were back and forth a lot
M: We were touring in-between, so it was all recorded in different chunks, which was good.
C: Yeah, it was helpful.
M: Being able to sit with the music, and then come back to it and change things was really cool.
I wanted to circle back to Tony Berg for a second; I’m a huge Boygenius fan, and I remember being excited when I saw his credit on ‘Small Enough’. How did your collaboration come about?
M: It was our manager, Steve! He’s known Tony forever. Over the summer, we were shopping around for producers, and Tony came into the mix pretty early on. We had a conversation and pretty much said, ‘Let’s do it!’ and we made the whole record with him.
Why did you choose to call the album All for Something?
C: It was the same way we named the band actually, just texting names back and forth. We went through so many names, one of them was A Little Bit Farther, the name of the tour. Humans Made This was another one. The end of our song ‘Wishes’ has a lyric that says, ‘I wish these wishes weren’t all for nothing,’ and I was like, ‘All for Something?’ Maybe everything we’ve done was necessary, all the hardships are for something, and that’s just what life is. It felt really fitting because the album’s themes circle around despair, and then hope. Or a hardship, and then a lesson learned.
Contrasts and parallels are something I picked up on in your music, like how ‘Tiny Things’ and ‘Delay’ both talk about doing dishes; was that intentional?
M: We had this question recently! There was no reason behind it, it just sounded nice.
I’m sure as musicians you listen to a lot of music, what are you all listening to at the minute?
J: The new Mk.gee record, Two Star & The Dream Police, is in my rotation a lot.
C: We’re all listening to the new Flyte record, and I’ve been listening to a lot of Pine Grove.
M: Deeper Well by Kacey Musgraves!
C: Cowboy Carter too, that’s a bit more amped up. I’m usually in more of a chill mode, very tired and sleepy; we’re not really shaking ass!
What were the key inspirations for the album?
C: Leith Ross’s To Learn is up there, the first song on our album is very parallel to that.
M: It’s all very Phoebe Bridgers-esc; naturally because Tony [Berg] worked on it with us, it’s very organic sounding.
J: Ryan Beatty too, if you know who that is?
Yes! I love him, ‘Cinnamon Bread’ is my favourite of his.
C: Mason Stoops played guitar on that record, and he plays on ours too! Tony is so well connected and has such a historical mind for music: any time you’d have an idea, he’d have a song to show you. That sort of stuff inspired the album a lot; like, we’d listen to a Beach Boys song, and then put a Beach Boys-style harmony into a song.
You’ve described ‘Mudroom’ as the perfect lead single for the album; what goes into the process of single selection? Is that fully in your hands?
J: Yeah, it’s fully in our hands. ‘Small Enough’ was technically the first single, but we wanted to contrast that and show our gentle side. ‘Mudroom’ was the start of the album cycle, and we wanted to do something a little different.
I wanted to talk about ’Small Enough’, because the album version is quite different to the single version. What made you want to go back and revisit it?
C: That was the first song we worked on with Tony, and the turnaround was really fast because we had to put a single out. We had our qualms with it, and after we had the context of the other songs on the record, it stuck out in a really strange way. We thought it’d be nice to tweak it and make it more seamless in terms of the record.
Do you guys have a big goal in mind? Whether that’s a collaboration, an award, anything!
C: I want to buy a house, that’d be nice!
M: A Grammy would be nice too! Even to go to the Grammys would be cool. Ultimately, and I feel like I say this for all of us, being able to live comfortably, and support the people we love, while doing what we love, is the ultimate goal. Seeing the world, loving each other and everyone else in our lives, and being happy! That’s the dream!”.
There are a lot of really interesting bands around at the moment. I think that there is something about Tiny Habits that stands out. Their debut album is a stunning release. I look forward to seeing where they go from here. I am going to move on to an interview from Thomas Bleach, where we get some new insight into the trio and their amazing debut album, All for Something. If you have not heard of the group, I would urge you to follow them on social media:
“THOMAS BLEACH: Your debut album “All For Something” is a beautifully introspective body of work that is raw, vulnerable, and healing. When you listen back to the record in its entirety now, what feelings and thoughts overcome you?
CINYA: I’m really proud of us every time I listen to this record. I think the title of the album kind of encapsulates what the process of creating it was like; we went through a lot separately and together and oftentimes it felt like the end was very far away. But every event and experience was genuinely necessary to help shape the way this album turned out, as well as the people we became throughout making it.
TB: The first song I want to talk about is ‘The Knocker’. The imagery behind this song mixed with your soft vocals draw the listener in so gently. Can you explain the creative process behind this track?
CINYA: I actually wrote this song for a songwriting class at Berklee. We had this exercise called “free writing” where someone would say a random word and we would write for an allotted amount of time and then underline any words or phrases that felt interesting enough to be part of a song or in this case, the title of it. I think the word for that one was “door”. I was in a relationship where I put a lot more effort in than I was receiving. I was literally always going to this person’s house and they would never come to me. It was such a symbolic representation of the dynamic between us. Therefore I was…. “the knocker”. This song took a long time to get right and we went through a lot of versions, constantly adding things and taking things out. We felt satisfied by the end when we sort of simplified things and let the song speak for itself.
TB: ‘Malleable’ hears you singing “How’d you think I’d take that? Cuz you seem surprised about me crying” which is such a heartbreaking and relatable lyric. Where were you when you wrote that lyric?
CINYA: Thank you! This song means a whole lot to me. This lyric definitely breaks my own heart because it makes me remember how I felt during the time of writing this song. I was in a situation where a person would say not-so-kind things under the guise of being honest. I never understood why it was necessary. I would feel so hurt by those things and wish I hadn’t heard them at all because I would fixate on them and allow them to dictate the person I became. ‘Malleable’ is about loving someone or having an attachment to them to the point of changing and disregarding not only your needs, but the entirety of your being to allow the relationship to continue. I think I needed that experience so I could write this song and so I could figure out who I was after so much of me had been dissolved.
TB: ‘Broken’ and ‘Planting Flowers’ both feel like very important songs on the album, and I love that they are back-to-back as they capture an intense guttural pain as well as a reminder that things will get better. Was that something you always envisioned by putting them next to each other in the tracklisting?
JUDAH: I’d say that was sort of unintentional when creating the sequence of the tracks, but we’re very happy that they ended up together. It took us a second to realize that tracks 6,7 and 8 make so much sense story wise because it goes from intense pain and hardship to acceptance and hopefulness, which is so beautiful. It’s a great moment in the project for people to hear us individually.
MAYA: I feel like although maybe unintentional at first, I’m also very glad the tracklist ended up this way as our “solo” songs are sort of “holding hands” with each other in a sense. It feels special that these songs are sequenced together.
TB: ‘Wishes’ is one of the most special songs I have heard so far in 2024. Your harmonies along with the soft guitar are soothing and heartbreaking at the same time. And the lyricism… Let’s talk about that. One of my favourite lines is “Wish I was in my body ‘stead of hoverin’ above”. Can you explain where that lyric came from?
MAYA: Thank you very much! This line happens in my verse…I was basically just trying to say that I wish I was more present a lot of the time rather than constantly thinking about something else. My brain is constantly turning and thinking about the next thing, and I wanted to express how it can be really hard for me to be present & just enjoy a specific moment.
TB: If you could pick one song from the album for people to discover your music through, what song do you think represents you as a group and this album the best, and would want them to listen to first?
CINYA: ‘Wishes’ I think. And then ‘Salt and Sand’.
TB: Earlier this year you opened for Gracie Abrams in Australia which seemed like a dreamy experience. What was one of your favourite moments from your time down under opening for her?
JUDAH: One of my favorite moments, besides playing in front of insanely large crowds in Australia, is when we got to spend some time with Gracie during a day off and got to know each other more. She genuinely is one of the kindest and most genuine people I’ve ever met, and I’m so grateful for those memories and experiences with her and her team. I cant believe we’ve gone from fans to friends, but we love her endlessly and cannot wait to see her in this new era!
TB: What was the biggest misconception you had about Australia that you debunked while you were here?
CINYA: I think I was expecting to see kangaroos hopping everywhere. Not true!
MAYA: I was also expecting to see massive spiders everywhere that are like crazy poisonous…didn’t see a tarantula once..
JUDAH: I was also expecting really big scary bugs everywhere, but I only saw one”.
I have a couple of interviews that I want to get to before that review of All for Something. DORK spoke with Tiny Habits last month. There are a lot of interesting takeaways from the interview. I like how all three members contribute to the songs. There is this unity and harmony that comes through from the entire creative and recording process. Another reason why their debut album is so spectacular and focused:
“Tiny Habits are a band who buzz with a special kind of magic, an organic alchemy that has swiftly propelled the trio into a rarified artistic realm. As Maya Rae, Cinya Khan, and Judah Mayowa prepare to unveil their highly-anticipated debut album ‘All For Something’, their journey represents a masterclass in songcraft, vulnerability and the profound power of creative kinship.
Rae is home in Boston, preparing to graduate from Berklee College of Music, the hallowed grounds where Tiny Habits were formed. Khan is basking in family time during a visit to Florida, while Mayowa is savouring friendship in Boston before they embark on their upcoming European tour run.
United yet distinct, the three share an innate collaborative symmetry at Tiny Habits’ core. Each member writes, arranges and lends their voice to the lush harmonic tapestries that have attracted audiences worldwide. It’s a potent fusion crystallised over three years of creative immersion and personal growth – the pinnacle so far their most recent headline tour across North America, their first ever as a headline act. “It was the most heartwarming and rewarding experience,” Rae gushes.
Tiny Habits’ origin tale shines like a beacon – three kindred artistic spirits converging at their shared alma mater in fateful fashion. “We all met at Berklee College of Music here in Boston. It was during Covid, so school was basically online, so we kind of met on Instagram,” Rae recounts. “I invited Judah and Cinya over one night after quarantine to sing with me in my dorm, and the rest is history! We made a bunch of videos that semester, and a year later, we were officially a band.”
PHOTO CREDIT: Sam Williams and Maggie-Barger
From those humble dorm room sessions blossomed a singular magic, their celestial harmonies instantly casting a spell over audiences worldwide. “As we started posting videos, we definitely saw that people were really moved by them and what we were creating,” says Rae. “It was cool to see people from all over interacting with us, and we felt so excited to keep creating together.”
Distilling Tiny Habits’ essence into just three words, Khan simply offers: “Honest, human, and harmony.” These hallmarks radiate through ‘All For Something’, the album’s title, an empowering mantra affirming their shared higher purpose. As Khan explains: “It took us forever to find a title. We thought we had cracked the code a couple of times, but then the creative process would continue, and those titles would no longer feel fitting.”
“After recording our song ‘Wishes’, which feels like one of the album’s highlights, we took another stab at album titles. The song’s last line is ‘I wish these wishes weren’t all for nothing’, so we decided it would be beautiful to spin that around and title the album ‘All For Something’. Everything we have gone through as a group, as well as individually, has proven to be for some greater purpose.”
One quintessential highlight for Khan was the raw intimacy of recording ‘Salt & Sand’. “It was the last song we made for the album, and we tracked the drums and piano simultaneously in one take as Judah sang a guiding vocal. [Producer] Tony Berg looked at me with tears in his eyes as it was happening. It was such a special moment.”
Yet their quest was as arduous as it was rewarding. “There were tons of challenges, but there was always a silver lining,” Khan says of working with “truly a one-of-a-kind producer” Berg. “He pushed us in ways we had never been pushed before. It was so interesting and necessary to have someone observe and challenge the way we arranged vocally. We had a very Tiny Habits way of harmonising, and working with Tony brought a totally different perspective that gave us more freedom than we felt we had before, which, interestingly, often came from limiting ourselves in certain ways.”
Berg’s innovative spirit catalysed an ethos of openness, with Tiny Habits embracing unexpected sonic inspirations. “Any word you say will spark something in Tony Berg’s brain, and the next thing you know, you’re listening to anything from Gregorian Chants to Radiohead,” Khan marvels. “The songs for this album were all pretty much fully written before we got to the studio, but I think a lot of inspiration sonically came from the players. We had so much fun working with different personalities and allowing them to play whatever they felt made sense”.
The final interview I am highlighting is from NME. I know that Tiny Habits are gaining traction and popularity in the U.K. The trio have come a long way in a short amount of time. The group have a series of gigs booked through the year. They are touring around North America. I do hope that they come to the U.K. and play very soon. They are a wonderful act that everyone should have on their radar. All for Something is one of the standout debut albums of the year so far:
“Tracing Tiny Habits’ journey to date draws attention to just how rapidly things have accelerated. Since officially forming in 2022, they’ve toured with Gracie Abrams and Noah Kahan, backed Lizzy McAlpine for her Tiny Desk performance and received praise from Elton John and the late David Crosby. On their first night singing together, cross-legged on the floor, they covered ‘Happy and Sad’ by Kacey Musgraves. Two years later they were harmonising with the Grammy-winning artist on her tour bus. Of all the highlights shared together thus far, it’s this that Mayowa quickly names the pinnacle. “It was one of those moments I did not process, and then two weeks later, I was like, ‘Oh, that happened!’” he laughs.
With upbringings scattered across the North American continent, each of Tiny Habits brings a set of cultural differences that subtly manifest in their varying vocal styles. Mayowa’s mother was a worship pastor in Birmingham, Alabama, meaning his early exposures to music were in church. For Khan, songwriting began as a form of teenage rebellion when her parents moved from drizzly New Jersey to the Sunshine State of Florida. It’s where she joins the call from today, a country-distance apart from her bandmates who are recuperating from the US leg of their tour in Boston, before they head to Europe. Rae grew up in Vancouver, Canada, where she spent her adolescence singing jazz standards alone in the city’s grassroots venues.
PHOTO CREDIT: Sam Williams
It’s why, when their harmonies made their way onto TikTok through a string of sentimental, slowed-down covers (everything from Carly Rae Jepsen’s ‘Call Me Maybe’ to A-ha’s ‘Take On Me’) they were received with rapturous acclaim, thanks to their unique ability to transform even the most ubiquitous pop songs into something entirely new. Though the virality of those early clips is now an integral part of their origin story, with the commenters being the ones to encourage them to release original music together, Tiny Habits are wary of the labelling of ‘TikTok Artists’ that’s been attached to many who came up through the platform post-pandemic.
“We’re not social media people at all. We’re not influencers, it’s really difficult for us to find the motivation to be consistent [with posting],” Khan explains, the ceiling fan behind her buzzing as it slices through the thick Floridian heat.
The band admit, however, that their relationship to the app is evolving from despair at its insatiable hunger for content to an appreciation of the real people behind the usernames in their comments section. “I’ve realised that that’s how people find you. That’s how you create a community,” Khan says. “To recognise that makes it less of an obligation and more of.. I don’t want to say it’s an honour, but it is an honour because all these people are taking time out of their day to watch it, to comment, to share it. And I think that’s really beautiful. So I’ve changed my perspective, because I used to hate [TikTok], but now I’m a fan.”
PHOTO CREDIT: Sam Williams
Now on their first headline tour, the real-life moments of connection forged through their music are all the more prominent anyway. At a recent gig, Mayowa witnessed a proposal from the stage — a friend of his college friend who had soundtracked simple moments of his relationship with their song ‘Tiny Things’. He decided if the song was played, he would propose to his long-time girlfriend.
“It was insane, they were holding each other while slow dancing and he whispered it,” he says, beaming while Rae and Khan, who were unaware of this particular anecdote, gasp. “Since then, every time we sing that song, I look out to see who is slow dancing and holding each other. We wrote a lot of the songs in stairwells, just sitting with each other, so it’s really cool that they have an impact on people that we don’t fucking know.”
This speaks to the vulnerability that runs through Tiny Habits’ music like a golden thread — one that subtly defines ‘All For Something’. Produced by Tony Berg [Taylor Swift, Boygenius], their debut album often feels like a series of heartfelt confessions. On ‘Wishes’, they take turns to delicately vent the things they’d like to change about their lives, from their relationships to parents to self-image, while ‘Flicker’ deals with an unrequited, toxic love.
“Man oh man oh man,” Mayowa laughs, leaning back on his bed and recalling the latter song’s conception. “I was really going through it. I was being put through the wringer by someone that I had feelings for. And I was like, ‘I need to write about this. I need to get this out. Because what else do you do when you’re a singer-songwriter?’”
PHOTO CREDIT: Sam Williams
Recording and releasing an album only two years on from establishing themselves as a band speaks volumes of Tiny Habits’ immense popularity — perhaps something that can be partly attributed to a wider folk-pop boom currently sweeping the US. Noah Kahan’s ‘Stick Season’ recently topped international charts, and fellow Berklee student Lizzy McAlpine’s ‘Ceilings’ was one of the biggest tracks of 2023.
Rae suggests this newfound hunger for folk is part of a collective longing for softness, following a tumultuous few years of global history – the same turbulence that pushed Tiny Habits into a post-lockdown singing session all those years ago. “I think people find comfort in connecting, and I think the folk world is a little bit more lyric and story-based,” Rae says. “Life is hard. I think people just want to hear words that maybe they can’t necessarily say, coming from another person that they feel they can connect to.”
Tiny Habits are perfectly poised, in that case, to deliver these much-needed doses of comfort. “We are very sensitive, vulnerable humans,” Mayowa says. Though they admit it’s the support of one another that’s made space for openness within their music. “When it’s someone’s song that they’ve written and we’re singing with them, it just feels like we’re having a conversation and holding their hand,” he continues. “Harmonising is like, ‘Hey, girl, we got you. We’re here. We got your back.’”
It’s why, above all, an unconditional friendship exists at the core of Tiny Habits – from the half-serious covers they sang, homesick and grappling with life in a new city three years ago, to the songs that now make up ‘All For Something’. And it’s something they’ve vowed not to lose sight of. “It’s just such a blessing to be able to sing with each other,” Khan says. “It feels like we’re just chatting with each other, and to sing a harmony on somebody’s story – with your best friends – is just the sweetest thing ever”.
I will finish off with a review from When the Horn Blows. There have been some really positive reviews. I think it is impossible not to like Tiny Habits. Their sound and songwriting instantly gets into the heart. They have even been given the nod of approval by Elton John. It is clear they will be commanding some big stages in years to come. Make sure that you follow them and keep abreast of their developments:
“To many, the underlying foundations of Tiny Habits - Maya Rae, Cinya Khan and Judah Mayowa - were formed on somewhat of an old chestnut. While many saw them sharing covers with one another in their Berklee dorm stairwell as a start-up cliche, many others just saw a wholesome exchange between three avid singer-songwriters eager to share their three-part harmonies out into the musical world.
Their reimagined versions of songs matched with their signature sound drove in viral success but it wasn't too long after where they dabbled into their own works. Lead hemenway, released at the end of 2022, gave us a flavour before we ventured into the new year.
Their first cozy folk-ladled EP of Tiny Things in 2023 was certainly a real eye-opener to what the trio can achieve. Encompassing delicate acoustic varnishing, the subtle six-parter, ironically, was a huge moment for the trio.
Spurred on by support slots from both soothing pop writers Gracie Abrams and Noah Kahan in the Autumn of 2023, this year sees Tiny Habits' release their highly-anticipated debut record.
A saving grace of whimsical flutterings, All For Something channels the trios' inner boygenius carving indie-folk musings for the soul. The album is sweetened by piano trickles and gentile drum instrumentals but the album's mainstay are the three's signature sound, as they entwine and weave beautiful harmonies within one another. A push-pull narrative of conceptual heartbreak, All For Something is a tale of striving in the face of life's problems. People Always Change and Flicker are the steady indie outpourings, as they bring deserved energy in-between moments of sombre pondering. Malleable is gorgeous songwriting, while four-minute Wishes is a prize worth unpacking, as Judah provides contrast with his lower end.
Tiny Habits are another rising collective where folk flowers bloom and All For Something is a great reflection of this. A perfectly brewed cup with a perfect soundtrack to match - Tiny Habits are certainly one of those on folks' folk watchlist. Even Sir Elton John approves”.
I will finish off there. Tiny Habits are a fabulous trio primed to go a very long way. Their debut album, All for Something, is well worth seeking out. I know that you will fall under their spell. If you have not experienced the wonder of Tiny Habits, then make sure you add them to your playlist. They are guaranteed to…
STAY in the memory.
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