Khatumu Speaks About Her Latest Album and Not Being Afraid to Start Again [PENNY 4.2]
- Tara Byrne
- 2 days ago
- 5 min read
This piece originates from the brand new Penny print issue, Penny 4.2. Find links to read the printed version below, with this piece starting on page 14.
Interview by Tara Byrne
On a rainy Tuesday, I had the pleasure of interviewing Khatumu, who was in between tours, having just finished a leg with Monrovia across the Midwest US. In a couple of weeks, she will embark on another tour, opening for Michigander and Oliver Hazard.
Unlike most musicians, Khatumu only began making music during the pandemic, after being sent home from her undergraduate program at Yale University. “I would spend like 6 hours a day doing music production. It was insane. I was like, ‘I wanna do that’, and I got a guitar, and I spent all my time doing it”, she recalled.
After spending over a year teaching herself guitar and Logic Pro, she decided it would be foolish not to join a musical group. The only caveat was that Khatumu couldn’t read sheet music, as she had forsaken the traditional music path. The only group not strictly requiring her to read music was the folk group, Tangled Up in Blue; naturally, she joined. She explains, “I liked that it was, like, oral tradition. They just taught you by singing it to you, and I was like that's what I'm gonna do. I didn't even know what folk music was before I started college”.
Likening folk music to a kind of nostalgia, Khatumu says, “There's something so amazing about banjo-playing. I really, really liked the storytelling aspect of folk. Even if you're not into folk music, if you just want to sit down and listen to a story, it's really awesome for that. I think that a lot of my stuff that I do now is rooted in that folk tradition, and I actually think that the music I'm making now is more similar to or is more inspired by that period of time in my life, or that musical period.”
Informed by her experiences in the group, Khatumu’s music is set apart by her layered use of instruments. For example, the song “hunting days” hooks listeners in with a banjo riff. Khatumu elaborated, “When I joined the folk band back in college, I had never seen anybody play a banjo. It sort of just felt like not a real instrument, and I am in love with it now. My grandma got me a banjo for Christmas.”
Khatumu continued to push herself musically while at college. In between her junior and senior year, she joined Whiffin' Poofs, the oldest a capella group in the country. Khatumu elaborated that, “It was all men until a few years ago. And so I was one of the first class of women to be in it. I was the only person who couldn't read music in the a cappella group. I learned a lot about harmony, and I think that a lot of my love for harmony and vocal blending comes from that.”
After graduating from college, Khatumu expected to stay on the East Coast, where her family and most of her friends are based. Instead, she chose to move to LA to pursue music more seriously, which is the theme of "departure time”. “Literally, a month and a half before I was supposed to move in somewhere, I was like, I kind of want to take music more seriously [...] I don't know any people in New York doing music, so I was like, I'll just check out LA”, Khatumu tells me. Thankfully, the leap of faith paid off. She still works with some of her college classmates, like PJ Frantz, who also moved out there and helped produce her most recent album.
I asked Khatumu about more of the specifics concerning the songs on free therapy, her first album released since graduating from college. She explained that the first song she released, “hunting days”, started out as an assignment for class. After presenting it, her professor encouraged her to release it online. She also spoke a bit about her unconventional songwriting process: “My favorite way to songwrite is in transit, which is kind of crazy. In LA, I don't have a car, and so I'm on transit a lot. And I just sit with my headphones, listening to guitars, patterns, and loops I've made, and I’ll sing over that.“ She also collaborates with other musicians when sourcing specific instruments for her songs, especially if said musicians are more skilled at their instrument than she is. For example, her friend Caleb Reske recorded the guitar stems for “hunting days” and later returned for “ivy league”, which Khatumu sang over.
As Khatumu elaborated, “hunting days” is about having feelings for someone and wanting nothing more than to be noticed by them. Referring to the love interest who inspired the song, Khatumu explained, “I wish that you would either treat me well or treat me like absolute shit, so I would know where we stand.” Most importantly, the song taught Khatumu to write even when she’s feeling uninspired because, as Khatumu says, “sometimes, there's inspiration in the mundane”.
In “pseudo doctors”, Khatumu sings, “I'm scared I'm giving my life to the internet”. She says she didn’t have many friends when she first moved to LA to pursue music, and the song speaks on how we sometimes turn to the internet for advice, instead of allowing ourselves to open up to the people we know. “I had a bad habit of, instead of reaching out to friends across the country about different interpersonal problems”, she said. “I would look up [my problems] on Reddit”, which is a relatable sentiment. On the flip side, the song is also about having to put yourself on the internet to get seen as an artist — as a musician, you share your vulnerabilities in your music, but you also need to find a way for it to connect to other people, which Khatumu says can be hard: “It can be kind of weird to market art that feels super, super vulnerable.”
On this record, Khatumu also featured a guest artist for the first time — Barrett sings on a stripped back version of “sober”. He was someone Khatumu found on her Spotify and reached out to. Stripping back the song was an intentional choice: “I feel like the message of the song is really strong, so I wanted to strip back some of the electronic-y elements, and just put the lyrics at the forefront,” explains Khatumu.
Right now, Khatumu is waiting to depart on her second tour. She says, so far this year, she’s been able to see corners of the US that she wouldn’t have otherwise. Her favourite part of the tour has been connecting with fans in person versus online. She explains, “I think that it's hard to create a full-fledged idea of a human off of a comment, and it's really cool to see that these people actually exist”, and are listening to her music.
When I asked about future projects, she said her upcoming projects promise to be more organic and charged with different emotions this time: “I haven't been able to write a love song — like, not a breakup song, a love song — in a while. I have this massive crush on somebody right now.”
Having experienced a new environment and fresh start, Khatumu concludes, “I feel a little bit different than I was last year, so…I think [my music] reflects that, too”.
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