Sarah Kinsley: 2024

This  FUV Live session is also available as a podcast, "FUV Live Sessions." We're elevating WFUV's long history of live sessions and interviews via a podcast that you can find on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Amazon Podcasts. New episodes drop every Monday.

There are multiple layers of grief and growing up on Sarah Kinsley's debut album, Escaper. Originally from California, Singapore, and Connecticut, Kinsley's adopted hometown is now New York; she’s a Columbia grad.

She also mastered the alchemy of going viral on TikTok in 2021 with her song “The King.” That experience was an education, but a viral song didn’t mean automatic success — Kinsley has worked hard to sustain and surpass that moment which has brought her to this place, her first album, three years later.

Following a path of four EPs prior to Escaper, this gifted songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer has written and recorded an album that reflects her own complex passage of loving, letting go and moving on.

Joined by her band for this FUV Live session — guitarist Dea Milo, keyboardist Jane Paknia, and drummer Zac Coe — Kinsley played three songs from Escaper, including the hard-hitting "Last Time We Never Meet Again," which details the dissolution of a toxic friendship. I thoroughly enjoyed my conversation with Sarah, who spoke frankly about the ever-changing effect of grief. "If you don't think too hard about it, almost everything in life can guide you back to a person you miss," said Kinsley, musing on songs like "Glint," which she performed in this FUV Live session.

Kinsley spoke of her own classical background, her love of film, working with producer John Congleton, and experiencing music in the "larger collective."

[Recorded: 8/29/24; Engineered by Jim O'Hara with Nadia Garriga; Produced by Meghan Offtermatt; videographers: Stephanie Lane, Bella Lipayon, Adithi Vimalanathan, Therese Burgo and Olivia Wahlert.]