BUZZKILL W/ NESS LALONDE

Gearing up for her first EP release, artist Ness Lalonde takes her listeners through the journey of her life during and after the pandemic in her eclectic EP titled Buzzkill. The Swiss-American artist talks to Santulan about the making of Buzzkill. 

Ness is no stranger to change. The singer was born in Switzerland, quickly moved to New Jersey, where she lived for 11 years until she moved to Paris for high school, returning to the United States for college in Los Angeles. Art has been a constant throughout her life. She’s using music to document her journey of growth, love and change in the last two and a half years. She shares that her music writing process was slow, and credits her ability to finish the project to her friend and producer, Chloe Corley. Finishing projects is hard, but Chloe inspired her to finish her songs, and has given her the motivation to then promote and release her music as well, which is something Ness shares she struggles with. She says,”making songs is easy, but there’s another half to it. It’s hard for me to promote my work and say, ‘pay attention to me’. 

Ness will be releasing BuzzKill in August, which she shares is about her experiences during the pandemic and what life has been like since then. The EP, two and a half years in the making, took so long because Ness would stop and take time away from the EP before coming back to it. She took moments to work through artist block and process big life events, which she opens up about in her EP. The album tackles a large portion of Ness’s exploration of her sexuality and experience with queerness. She shares, “this album is a good chunk of my queer journey, because when I started writing this album, I had just come out, and the album is about that journey.” She goes on to say that, “I got into my first queer relationship midway through working on this album, so some of the songs are about being in love with that person, and then that relationship ended, so some of the songs are about heartbreak… every song is very intimate, and every sound is purposely left there.” 

Ness has been very intentional with each aspect of her music in this album, and has overall worked to create an EP which is raw, intimate, and an open look into her life. She shares that in many places, the flaws and bare bones of the songs remain, to further the rawness of her emotions in this album. The EP does not fit into any single genre, with inspirations from Blood Orange, The Strokes, Bon Iver and Clairo, and more. 

Ness is excited for the world to hear her music, particularly her title song, Buzzkill, saying that, “it was worth making the whole album just to make that one song.” She shares that the song went through multiple versions, and when the final one was picked, she was just excited for everyone to hear it. Even through the nerves with putting out something so close to her heart, the singer is itching for the album release and can't wait for people to connect with her music.