Okay Kaya Returns with Musings About the Nervous System on New Single “Spinal Tap”

She also announced her new album SAP, which is out November 4 via Jagjaguwar.

Okay Kaya Returns with Musings About the Nervous System on New Single “Spinal Tap”

She also announced her new album SAP, which is out November 4 via Jagjaguwar.

Words: Margaret Farrell

Photo: Robin Hilleary

August 04, 2022

Today, Kaya Wilkins, a.k.a. Okay Kaya, announced the follow-up to 2020's Watch This Liquid Pour Itself. The new concept album titled SAP is centered around consciousness, and it's out November 4 via Jagjaguwar. Entirely written, performed, engineered, and produced by Wilkins, the first single is called "Spinal Tap" and it comes with an entrancing, slightly creepy animated video that she made with visual artist Austin Lee.

“My writing process often begins with images in lieu of words," Wilkins shared. "What if you’re tree-juice? How far along the stem do you have to ride before you get away from your parents and realize you’re the tear of this person and the blood of this person? I see a vision in my mind’s eye and take it from there. Austin has such a profound visual sensibility. Together, we translated many of my drawings. They became a wonderful invitation into his world. We developed this mascot, SAP, an alternate version of self.”

She added about the song itself: "I wrote ‘Spinal Tap’ because you may have believed your brain as an impermeable slate and your dreams as strictly food for Freudian thought, but according to a science.org article from 2019 on CSF fluid, 'large oscillations of fluid inflow to the brain appeared during sleep and were tightly coupled to functional magnetic resonance imaging signals and entrained to electroencephalogram slow waves. Slow oscillatory neuronal activity thus leads to oscillations in blood volume, drawing cerebrospinal fluid into and out of the brain.’”

Watch the video for "Spinal Tap" below, and pre-order SAP here.