TEHYA — ‘catch//release’: on the hook you know is destroying you and can’t leave

There are Neon Gold Records signings, and then there is Neon Gold Records logic. The label — which launched Charli XCX, Tove Lo, MARINA, and Christine and the Queens — has never been a home for casual pop. It has always been a place where something genuinely unlike anything else gets time and space to become itself. TEHYA has been that kind of project for a while: Pacific Northwest-raised, multiply-rooted, rigorously self-made. Cover of NME. Cover of Spotify Fresh Finds. A songwriter who writes every word and topline herself. The kind of artist you feel building. “catch//release” is the song where the feeling becomes fact.

The metaphor at the centre of the song is as economical as the best ones are. Both partners in a toxic relationship take turns as the fish on the hook — and as the one holding the line. TEHYA describes the logic directly: “the turbulence of realizing someone you love is holding you back, while still being so attached and not understanding how to let go despite the toxicity… ‘look straight in its eyes,’ highlighting the acknowledgment of life behind them, knowing you’re hurting this living thing, becoming attached to that humanization.” The lyric earns the concept: “oooo you hooked me good / am I doing this right? / looked straight in its eyes / now I’m too attached too attached to / catch and release.” A music video directed by Brandon Mosquera arrives alongside the single.

That kind of precision — image-making that seems obvious once you hear it but didn’t exist before — comes from a particular place. TEHYA grew up in the Pacific Northwest at the intersection of Cherokee, Filipino, and Scotch-Irish roots. Her father is a local legend funk drummer. She left home at 16 and found her community in Seattle’s Capitol Hill underground rap scene, teaching herself Pro Tools and FL Studio by sitting in on sessions until she was handed the keys. She plays guitar, keys, and drums. She writes her own toplines and lyrics without exception. Earlier releases — “the patriot,” a meditation on Indigenous visibility that has taken on new weight in the current climate; “spoons for sweets”; “trap door” — established the range. “catch//release” is the thing she has been sharpening that range toward.

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Alongside the single, TEHYA is announcing a changeable feast, a five-track EP due August 14. The tracklist — catch//release, buckwild, the patriot, 4L, complicated — moves across registers in a way that refuses to hold still. She also appears in a starring role in Love Spells’ video for his latest release, a detail that places her squarely in the broader scene: someone you want in the frame.

a changeable feast is out August 14 via Neon Gold Records / Futures. Follow TEHYA at instagram.com/oktehya; more at neon.gold and futures.music.

Tags: a changeable feast, catch//release, indie pop songs, Neon Gold Records, TEHYA

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