Toronto singer/songwriter/producer Nyssa has released her debut album, Girls Like Me today. The record has been garnering early praise through a string of singles and captivating live performances.
Discussing the album, Nyssa states, “‘Girls Like Me’is an album about freedom. We all look to stories and fictions for clues on how to navigate our messy lives. I seek to write anthems for all our rebellions. I aim to shed light on new pathways. Non-men lack the power to wander freely. I wrote these songs to fill this wandering void. Hitchhikers. Outlaws. Killers. Rebels. Bad boys. Renegade heirs. Players. Lovers. I want to embody each of these. As a woman. An androgyne. A pansexual pagan.
Girls Like Me is a practice in double-entendre—in title and in play, in composition and performance. Nyssa is a hybrid artist, who doesn’t believe in genre-constraints. The songs on Girls Like Me fall somewhere between folk and pop, country and electronic, punk and soul, dance-pop and power balladry, but that’s not what defines them. Nyssa adds, “I consider the realm of popular music as one vast land. I believe in continuously connecting and following the through-lines. Each musical moment is informed by another, and as such, each of the songs on ‘Girls Like Me’ is purposefully in dialog with its past.”
Nyssa has a great understanding of modern life. Her character-driven songwriting illuminates the big picture with its edges curling in from the heat of the flame. Her cross-genre, cross-decade approach to production—with its marriage of digital and analog, live sound and sampling—is uniquely captivating. sBetween her loner childhood, musical obsessions, and over a decade waiting tables and people watching, she’s cultivated a distinct lyrical voice and production style, seeking to tell stories that haven’t been told and forge unique sonic pathways.
Girls Like Me was written and produced by Nyssa in Toronto over the past year plus and includes contributions and performances from a number of local musicians including Zack Burgess (Kremlin, Gardenworld), Matthew Aldred(Modern Superstitions, Michael Rault), Carlyn Bezic (Ice Cream, Darlene Shrugg), Meg Remy (U.S. Girls), Jay Anderson (Badge Epogue Ensemble), Matt McClaren (Maylee Todd, Biblical), and Andy Scott. It was recorded at home, at Dreamhouse Studios, and at Palace Sound, engineered by Calvin Hartwick and Steve Chahley, mixed by Hartwick and Nyssa, and mastered by Sarah Register.
The album’s ten songs will serve as a true introduction to Nyssa, new patron saint of lost and lonely outcasts.
