After a Six-Year Hiatus, Jay Som Is Ready to Run Indie-Rock Again

It’s been a long time since the last Jay Som album. But Melina Duterte, the braintrust behind the alias, hasn’t exactly idled since 2019’s Anak Ko. She’s one of the most secretly influential voices in indie rock, having lent her production and engineering skills to Chris Farren, Lucy Dacus, and Boygenius, even performing with the latter on tour. Her artistic style—a compelling blend of heart-on-sleeve emo catharsis, bedroom-pop introspection, and soft singer-songwriter delivery—has surfaced as one of the definitive exports of the decade so far. Her fourth record, Belong, shows that her music hasn’t lost any of its luster. From the Jim Adkins-featuring banger “Float” to the muted moodiness of closing track “Want It All,” Duterte’s latest, out this week, is another triumph. Ahead of its release, I spoke with Duterte over Zoom earlier this summer about how it feels to release her own music after six years, how collaboration informs her work, and the importance of eliciting a “hell yeah” from her listeners.

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JAY SOM: Hi. So sorry.

GRANT SHARPLES: No, you’re okay. How’s it going?

SOM: I just got stuck in email world for a second.

SHARPLES: That’s a scary place. I imagine you’re probably busy with the new album coming out in just a few months. Your first since 2019. How does it feel?

SOM: It feels good. It feels kind of scary. I mean, six years is a really long time, and I think I’ve changed significantly. I am 31 now so my brain has changed, and my taste in music and the sort of people I work with nowadays. So it’s kind of compounded into this new experience. It feels like barely scratching the surface. 

SHARPLES: What are some of the ways that your tastes have changed and how has that affected your music?

SOM: I think becoming a serious producer and engineer introduced me to a lot of different genres of music. I worked with a lot more punk-ish bands and also more singer-songwriter folks, and electronic people as well. So naturally that inspired my new record to explore different options for genres.

SHARPLES: Yeah. You’ve produced everything from the Chris Farren record to the new Lucy Dacus album. That’s pretty wide-ranging.

SOM: Yeah, the song that we did just came out today.

SHARPLES: Yeah, I saw. When did you guys work on that?

SOM: That was actually pretty recent, like the end of May. We recorded in L.A., and Sarah Tudzin from Illuminati [Hotties] and I did some co-production with Lucy that was super fun. Lucy likes to record music in between shows and tours. She works really hard.

SHARPLES: Wow, yeah. Having collaborated with all these different people, what do you feel like you’ve been able to learn from these other musicians and artists?

SOM: I’ve been able to learn how to chill out more and reduce my expectations of people. Having the unique experience of being an artist in the studio gives you more perspective on how strange and vulnerable it is to work with people in that environment. When I produce and engineer people it’s really easy to just be like, “Let’s go on a walk. There’s some weird tension. We need to move our bodies. Let’s eat because everyone’s mad right now.” I think the key is to not be hungry in the studio. Also the dynamics of working with people in bands—sometimes there’s four to five people in a tiny room and you have to be there for eight to 10 hours, so you also have to be their cheerleader. There’s a lot of back and forth learning for me.

SHARPLES: So when did you decide, “Okay, I think it’s finally time for the next Jay Som album”?

SOM: I think the mindset, “Oh, wow, I’m really doing it,” happened this year. I’ve been working on it for a long time now. I had some failed attempts in 2022. Well, not failed attempts, but just more like I was trying to work with other people. While I was touring with Boygenius, I had this new set of feelings and inspirations coming in and I remember thinking, “I need to get on this. I need to work on my music,” because I feel inspired. But I kept getting writer’s block and when that happens to me, when I feel like I’m not having fun, I just stop. That’s kind of my relationship to music. If I’m not feeling it, I just won’t do it. Me being gone for six years kind of shows that. [Laughs] My friend João [Gonzalez] co-produced the record with me, and Mallory [Hauser] co-produced and played the guitar. I had been friends with them for years before working with them, and naturally it was kind of like, “Do you want to help me write? I don’t really know what’s going on with the song.” Kyle Pulley who owns Headroom Studios in Philly helped a lot when I showed him stuff. Some producers on this record would gravitate to certain songs and then others wouldn’t. It felt like a sweet mixture of everyone’s input plus mine.

SHARPLES: The fact that all of this started to coalesce this year, do these songs still feel fairly fresh to you?

SOM: Yeah, they do. We’ve been playing the songs live and we’re just trying to figure out how to work with them, because no one knows them yet. It’s fun to arrange them and see how it feels in the physical space.

SHARPLES: Another thing that stood out to me with this album is that you have features on here for the first time, and they’re pretty two big emo Titans: Jim Adkins and Hayley Williams. How did those come to fruition?

SOM: That’s a good way to say it, emo titans. [Laughs] With Hayley from Paramore, I opened for her back in 2018 for the Paramore After Laughter album. I just remember from the first day we met, she was super nice, with the nicest crew ever. We kept in touch throughout the years, and she just texts me sometimes like, “Hey, are you working on the new record? Let me know if you want any vocals or harmonies.” Getting a text from Hayley Williams offering to sing on a song is crazy. Eventually she introduced me to Steph Marziano, and we started working on stuff. I was like, “We should go to Nashville and see if Hayley can hop on a song.” So we went to Nashville and wrote “Past Lives” the night before. She came in the next day and stayed for six hours. We got to catch up and talk about music and personal stuff. It’s one of my favorite memories from the record. But with Jim Adkins, everything was remote. I remember finishing “Float” and thinking, “I really want a guy to sing on this.” All I could think of was Jim Adkins, because I’m a huge Jimmy Eat World fan. He has one of my favorite voices in alternative rock. Somehow my manager had a connection to him through Courtney Marie Andrews, who used to be in Jimmy Eat World.

SHARPLES: Oh, I forgot about that.

SOM: Yeah, she’s great. Jim was super down. We kept in touch for a while and then had radio silence for a second, and I was like, “We’re about to turn in the record and he’s not going to do it, but it’s okay.” Then all of a sudden, a week before I was supposed to turn it in, he’s like, “Hey, I’m about to get into the studio right now. I can record the song.” Luckily I was at home in L.A. and available to talk to him on the phone and give him notes, and he killed it. I love his voice on that song.

SHARPLES: It sounds like a buzzer-beater situation.

SOM: It’s crazy, yeah.

SHARPLES: It feels like a more indie rock version of “A Praise Chorus.”

SOM: Oh, hell yeah. That’s my favorite.

SHARPLES: That’s one of my favorite Jimmy Eat World songs. Also, “Float” has been on repeat for me. Every time I listen to it I’m just like, “Hell yeah.”

SOM: Thank you. That’s what I want. I want people to listen and go, “Hell yeah.”

SHARPLES: Aside from having features on here, what are some of the other things you’re doing differently compared to the previous two albums?

SOM: I think exploring my electronic side a little more. That comes through in “Cards on the Table,” which was heavily inspired by Frou Frou and the details in her album. I wanted to experiment more with rhythm and fake drums. That’s something I’ve been doing in production lately, but I’d never done that with Jay Som. So there’s lots of sampling and beat drops in the song.

SHARPLES: Yeah, some new electronic textures and drum machines have been expanding the Jay Som sonic universe. As far as the lyrics go, what are some of the things that you explored on this one?

SOM: There’s a lot of songs about platonic relationships. In my early twenties, I was figuring out love and what it meant to date people and how that can be a tumultuous experience that you don’t understand. It’s really easy to express feelings of love and devastation through song. Most of the songs are about love, but I was kind of surprised by how much I was writing about friendship. And about how there’s a certain dynamic that everyone has to navigate throughout their lives, which is platonic friendship. Whether it’s a working or personal one, where you rub up against each other and feel so misunderstood. And those types of people will always walk in and out of your life—mostly out of your life. [Laughs] But that’s something that is so necessary as an adult. I still feel like I’m struggling with that and learning from it. It’s definitely an album about experiencing people, and how I felt about working with so many people and having so many best friends come in and out of my life.

SHARPLES: How do you feel like those experiences and those feelings come through in the music itself?

SOM: The other day someone said that my music never has any surprises. They already know what’s going to happen. It’s very clean-cut. There’s some interesting choices and it’s never boring to them. And I really appreciated that because I feel like my personality is very direct when I work with people and when I’m friends with people. So I hope that that’s kind of what comes through sonically. It’s just like, “I have this idea, I want to show it right now.” Sometimes it happens once, sometimes it never happens again.

SHARPLES: There’s no bullshit. 

SOM: Yeah, just no bullshit. [Laughs]

SHARPLES: That’s a good ethos to live by. What is your favorite song on this album? 

SOM: I changed my mind, but I have been saying “Cards On The Table” because it sounds a little different than the other ones on the record. It’s fun. 

SHARPLES: I mean, like you were saying, it’s different because it’s a little more electronic, and I think it’s a nice opening statement for the album. Treading some new territory.

SOM: I also like “What You Need.” I know you didn’t ask if I had a second favorite.

SHARPLES: You know what? Let’s go for a second favorite too.

SOM: Exactly. And that’s going to be the third single.

SHARPLES: Well, perfect.

SOM: Yeah.

SHARPLES: Do you think we will have to wait another six years for a new Jay Som?

SOM: I can’t promise anything. No, I’m just kidding. Definitely not. I feel like I’m in a haze right now in a good way, just more like a flow state where I keep thinking, “I can’t wait to go back home and make more music.” I already have ideas. It’s really, really easy to feel inspired on the road, especially when you’re watching a band you’re opening up for and you see how they work together and how their songs translate from the record into the live setting. So I’m always listening, I’m always watching and taking in as much information as I can so I can put that energy into the studio with my own music.

SHARPLES: That’s a good sign too, that you don’t think it’ll be as long of a wait. Because like you said, if you’re not feeling it, you’re not going to do it. It’s good to hear that you are feeling the music that you’re making.

SOM: Yeah, exactly. Thank you.

SHARPLES: Lastly, what do you hope that your fans and listeners are able to take away from this new album?

SOM: That question is always a little hard for me, because I just want to give it to people. I don’t want to tell them how to listen to it. If they want to have any type of relationship with it, if they just want to listen to the singles or to one song on repeat and eventually listen to the whole album, I think that’s great. I’m excited for new people to be introduced to my music and maybe listen to my older stuff as well and just kind of enter my world. And I hope that it’s welcoming.