Q&A: Teather Releases Single, “With You”, Ahead of Debut Album, ‘It Was Only Perfect Because It Was Never Real’
WRITTEN BY FAITH LUEVANOS
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Evil, sexy, and daring, LA-based artist/producer Teather is gearing up for the release of her debut album, It Was Only Perfect Because It Was Never Real. The album is set to release August 1, but listeners have been able to get a sneak peek of what’s to come in her latest singles, “With You” and “Kissing Spree.”
Based on experiences in the dating world after a long-term relationship, “With You” has instantly become a fan favorite, combining James Bond visuals with dark, whispering vocals. Teather is an artist who has found her niche, perfectly curating and encapsulating new levels of female seduction and empowerment.
Life On Jupiter received the opportunity to sit down and speak with Teather about the creative process behind her new singles, her excitement for the album’s release, her relationship with music, and more.
LIFE ON JUPITER: Your new single, “With You” is out, which is super exciting since you’ve had such a cool rollout with it. Can you share the story behind the song?
TEATHER: So this song I wrote in the fall of 2024, and I'd gotten out of a long-term relationship a little bit before then, and was kind of dipping my toes back into meeting new people who all just kind of felt like randos after I’d been in a very intertwined relationship. I found myself with this guy, and I was like, This guy's so annoying. He's dumb; there’s no purpose in being here. That's where that I call my lover a joke line comes from. It's just like, What am I doing? So the song's about not knowing who you are or where you're going in your life without this future that you had projected for yourself for a very long time.
How did you get your start in music?
TEATHER: I started out singing my whole life. I've always been a singer, and I was classically trained. I sang in a traditional choir in high school, and then I had worked with producers a little bit when I was younger, and just didn't ever feel like that made music click for me. In the lockdown in 2020, I had so much time on my hands, I was just living with friends, and we had nothing to do, so I just started producing in the garage of our house in college. Production really made everything click. I don't think I really wanted to do music until I started producing. And now I love all parts of it, but I needed that creative control to be able to get engaged with it.
So everything you’ve made so far is self-produced? That’s incredible!
TEATHER: Yeah, everything that's out is entirely produced by me. I have an album coming out this summer that has some additional production by my friend Ienne; she's great. She did some additional piano work and added some production to it, and co-produced the closing track. I think in January, I had an EP ready, and I was like, Okay, I could release an EP, but the concept of it was so solid. It all had the same message, but then I wrote the rest of it in maybe three months. Having the additional production help was great, but pretty much 95% album was produced by me.
You’ve described your music as evil and sexy. Where do you pull inspiration from when curating your sound?
TEATHER: I think I'm a real purist when it comes to making music. I try to be in a vacuum; I really try not to listen to too much when I'm writing. I'll just stop listening to music for months at a time when I'm writing. But I love electronic music. I'm a huge fan of raves, the warehouse scene in LA, and kind of the people that take that culture and that sound and bring pop music into it. I think FKA twigs has done that well in her most recent record, Sega Bodega, I love. So that's the realm that I end up in. I've also been just so in love with everything from the '90s. I've been wearing ‘90s clothes for my entire life, like my mom's old '90s stuff. It's always been my favorite resource for fashion and culture. There's also been a lot of influence from the ‘90s downtempo and trip-hop. The album closer is almost like this ‘90s movie end credit song, where it feels like you're just watching something that existed 30 years ago. I don't fuck with nostalgia, I think nostalgia is evil, so I don't have nostalgia for the ‘90s. I was not born, but I just think it's awesome. So that's been a little bit more of the inspiration for the record, but most of it is just inspired as I write from my life. This whole album is all about relationships. I think that's pretty much all I ever write about, which I think is typical.
The visuals for “With You” are so well matched to the song. What did that process look like to create them?
TEATHER: The visual stuff is a huge part of the whole Teather universe. I don't think there's any existence of music without everything being built around it. I work with just a handful of people. My cinematographer, who did that video with me, works with me on all the other videos, and it's been a great relationship. In this particular video, I was visiting my family in the Midwest, and my grandpa was watching James Bond. He was watching Live and Let Die, and I was like, That intro is awesome. Did not watch the rest of the movie (laughs), but it's just so sexy. It's sexy and it's evil. It's kind of like this intersection between threatening and foreboding, but also fun and sexy and a celebration. We made that video and the video for “East to West” over Presidents Day weekend. We made two and a half videos in three days. It was crazy, but that one was pretty fun. We were in a studio, and I was just dancing, and we got really lucky. There was no movement direction. It was kind of like our brainchild, and we just had to throw it together. I'm glad I could do all the dancing that I did and that it looked good.
Besides Live and Let Die, what other film do you envision your music in?
TEATHER: Secretary. That’s a perfect place to put this song.
For any new listeners who may be discovering you for the first time, what songs in your discography would you guide them to start with? What’s the Teather starter-kit?
TEATHER: For this era, put on “With You” and the most recent releases, those will all be on the album. But if you want a good love song, a really old classic is “Sinking.” People love that one. I feel like “East to West” is its sister track; it's the matured version of it. The three singles from the album that are out are perfectly representative of what you're getting next. You're getting some club, derelict fun, we're just having a good time, and like “With You,” you're getting some dark, doubting, introspective ones. And you're getting some love songs like “East to West.”
What has your experience been like playing these songs live?
TEATHER: I've actually been playing all these songs for the last year live. A lot of these songs, every time I wrote them, I would just take them out into the space and see how they went. Actually, the first time I played “With You,” I was playing a show in North Hollywood, and I was on my deathbed. I was so sick, but I got sick the day before, so I really didn't want to cancel. So I just went up and did my set and masked up around everybody the rest of the time, but I could barely sing. I was doing the best I could, and I played it for everyone, and I felt the energy, and the entire bar just shifted, everyone was like, What the fuck is going on? I already knew it, but then I knew this was the one. The Teather shows are a mix between a DJ set in a traditional show. I do sing everything live, there's no backing tracks, so you're getting great vocals, but you're getting the club beats, and everything that's going on. We get a lot of dancing, we get a lot of having fun. We're redoing the live show for the album, so there will be some more theatrics and some other weird things.
By the time this interview comes out, your song “Kissing Spree” will be out as well.
TEATHER: Yeah, it's kind of like the flip side of “With You.” “With You” is about exploring new people and new things after getting out of a long-term relationship, and feeling the terror and dread and the “What the fuck is going on” of it all. “Kissing Spree” is when I was ideating on being “free” for the first time, and it was like, I'm going on a kissing spree. I'm gonna kiss everyone on planet Earth, and nobody's gonna stop me. I didn't do that by the way. (laughs)
What drives you to make music?
TEATHER: Before I made music, I feel like I was almost a totally different person. My Myers-Briggs results changed, which is crazy. After I started making music, I think I was an INTJ, which, there are a lot of evil dictators in that one, it tracks for me, but now I'm INFJ, so I've changed from thinking to feeling. For me, making music is my way to make sense of the world and to express myself, and I think without expression, I'm just a nightmare. I feel like I'm only a normal person when I'm expressing, and I'm a huge workaholic, so having a million things to do all the time keeps me sane and pure.