Kacy Hill is Nourishing Her Roots

In a music industry driven by commercial metrics and fleeting trends, Kacy Hill stands out as a quiet yet resolute artist, imbued with the spirit to forge her own path. She has seen both sides of the coin; initially vaulted to major-label status through a recording contract with Kanye West’s G.O.O.D. Music—and the release of her debut 2017 album, Like a Woman—Hill recalibrated and struck out on her own in 2019 before joining the Nettwerk roster in 2023. Although her association with West brought significant opportunities (her first musical collaboration was on Travis Scott’s “90210” off his hit debut album Rodeo) she found herself, as a young musician, incompatible with the high-rolling, hit-craving establishment recording industry. This experience, coupled with the dissolution of a prominent long-term relationship and creative partnership, precipitated the extensive introspection which coalesced this spring into her latest studio album, Bug.

Bug veers away from the polished formulas of mainstream pop, delving instead into deeply personal and emotionally complex terrain. After releasing two albums independently during the pandemic—efforts that, while well-crafted, left her feeling creatively drained—Hill found herself at a crossroads. “Why am I doing this?” she wondered, confronting the chasm between her artistic intentions and the often harsh realities of the music business. Her own naïveté as a young signee also contributed to her disenchantment with the industry. “My perception of it when I got into music was, you get this big record deal and then you become famous,” she recalls. “Then you have money for the rest of your life and you’re a superstar. It didn’t pan out. I was like, ‘I am a profound failure.’” At one point in the pandemic, she even enrolled in coding classes online with the idea of transitioning into software engineering in lieu of music.

Opting to dig in her heels, Hill turned inward to grapple with her discontent, channeling her experiences—fraught with both heartache and healing—into Bug. The album stands as a cathartic release, one that voices the unspoken tensions of a sputtering long-term relationship and rekindles her musical jouissance from a more grounded vantage point. “I think Bug came out of trying to find joy in music again,” Hill explains from her home in Los Angeles. “I was burned out after releasing two albums during the pandemic. I wasn’t sure if this was what I wanted anymore.”

Bug is steeped in the emotional turbulence of Hill’s personal life, particularly the dissolution of a six-and-a-half-year relationship. As her romance unraveled, Hill turned to songwriting as a way to process the grief she had been silently carrying. “I wrote so many love songs before, but that’s not where I was anymore,” she explains. Confronting these emotions through music became a vital outlet for expressing the truth she had avoided for so long. “Once I started saying things in the songs, I couldn’t stop. The relationship was going to end, but talking about it would make it real,” she says. This honest reckoning with her own doubts and the subsequent rebirth of her creative energy permeate Bug, which oscillates between reflections on her bygone relationship, musings on the passage of time, and the tension between contentment and ambition. “This was the petty version of me saying, ‘Damn, I wish you’d be the man I thought you were going to be,’” she admits, alluding to a prominent line off the album’s second track, “Damn.”

Hill’s inspiration derives from an enduring array of artists, from Sheryl Crow and Peter Gabriel to The Chicks and Alanis Morrisette, soundmakers whose music shaped her early years and continues to inform her creative process. “My references are always country music and Peter Gabriel and Christopher Cross…[my influences] stay consistent across albums,” she notes. This blend of influences peeks through Bug, contributing to a shifting sound which runs the gamut of genres. Bedroom pop, folk, soft rock, and tinges of R&B obfuscate the album’s genre, blurring cohesively into the kind of record you could listen to while pulling weeds, commuting home from work, or reflecting on a lost love while splayed out on your mattress. In a sonic, onomatopoeic sense, the album whirrs and bounces, sways and steers, but—most importantly—digs inward. It is, by definition, a garden record—down to the album’s name itself.

The title Bug carries personal weight. Hill has been affectionately dubbed ‘Bug’ by her family since childhood, and naming the album thus served as a pseudonymous return to her roots. “I’ve always been called Bug, so it felt fitting to name the album that. It’s about returning to joy, to nature, and finding myself again,” she explains. This return to essence, to nature, is central to the album’s narrative arc, permeating Bug as a theme and a source of inspiration. Hill’s experience of moving into a new house with a garden in 2022 (while still in the weeds of her ill-fated relationship) became a catalyst for the reconfiguration of the relationship between Hill, her creative soul, and nature. “So much of it was inspired by watching things grow and watching the bugs in the garden,” she reflects. This connection to the natural world informed both the album’s title and its themes of growth, resilience, and renewal: “It sounds a bit cliché, but reconnecting with nature helped me see that nothing is guaranteed, and that’s okay.”

The suite of visualizers accompanying the Bug universe prominently reflect the pervasive influence of that garden—specifically through an idyllic, oxytocin-inducing lens. Hill is variably seen picking fruit betwixt shots of scuttling soil fauna, driving along winding tree-flanked roads, shooting on film (butterflies in her hair, of course), laying amongst tall grasses, and tending to artificial beehives. Pollinators, aptly, are central to the visual identity of Bug. Busying themselves with their crucial ecological labor, beetles, ladybugs, and butterflies alike occupy as much screen time as the artist herself, constructing a parallel between artist and environment—observing the unpredictability of growth in her garden, she began to understand that success, like nature, cannot be forced. “Stuff doesn’t grow because of me or in spite of me—it just does what it’s going to do,” she remarks, noting the importance of this epiphany in freeing her to decouple expectations from her work. “Nothing is promised to us, nothing is guaranteed. My expectation of success has changed so dramatically after having a garden. That is the ethos of Bug.”

When asked about her growth as a songwriter over the past few years, Hill credits her collaborative circle. “When I first started doing music, I had no idea what I was doing,” she considers. “Collaboration is the best thing you can do as an artist, a producer, a songwriter. You always learn something by working with someone new.” In her case, the scope of her output ballooned across albums, advancing from writing to arranging by computer, mixing, programming drums, general engineering, and more. “I’m not a good musician,” she says, referring to the playing of instruments. “[But] being heavily involved in the production, I’ve become a better producer.”

This hands-on learning curve extends beyond the music itself, with Hill also taking the reins of the visual output in the role of creative director. “When I first started, I had no idea what I was doing,” she admitted. “Creative directing the last three albums and writing the music videos—being able to outsource, how do I bring people into this to help execute my ideas best?” she ponders. “That’s been the biggest evolution.”

Hill’s newfound autonomy, rooted in the evolution of her musicianship, visual creativity, and self, has brought her into a fresh headspace within which to connect with her listeners. Supporting the release of Bug was a national tour this past summer, followed this fall by a second run of shows opening for Montell Fish and a final performance in November at the Mates Festival in Los Angeles. This journey marks a new chapter for Hill, who hasn’t headlined since the throes of the pandemic in 2021. “It was really brutal. It was high anxiety. [Places] were shutting down left and right. It felt like this evil undercurrent under everything,” she mentions in reference to the rebounding lockdowns. “[The new tour] renews my faith and gives me motivation. Doing it online just doesn’t feel as real. Even if there are five people there to sing some bit of your songs back to you, it’s surreal and exciting.”

As we reached the end of our conversation, I queried the songstress about her intended listening experience for soaking in Bug. “Music in motion,” she quips. “It’s like traveling or cleaning music. Sunday afternoon, I want to listen to my music. That’s when I’m most tapped in, I’m engaged.” Upon further reflection, she pinpoints a childhood memory that has influenced her relationship with music appreciation. “My dad was obsessed with Collective Soul. One time he was blasting it so loud, he was cleaning, and my mom went to drop me off at [his] house. I was banging on the door and he couldn’t hear me. I had to crawl through the dog door to get in the house,” she laughs. “But that’s like my music, you’re either blasting it or you’re driving.”

A testament to Hill’s deliberation and resilience, Bug marks a milestone in her path as a fully realized creative. After navigating the distinct challenges of the broader music industry and confronting her own doubts, Hill has emerged stronger, more self-assured, and energetically revitalized. Through Bug, she has alchemized personal pain into an oasis of sound, rekindling her affection for music in the process. As she embarks on this new chapter of her career, Hill acknowledges the power of Bug. “I was so buried in myself and it was the only outlet I had. It was inevitable,” she asserts. “If I’m going to be alive, I might as well enjoy it. If I’m going to continue to make music, I might as well enjoy it. If I’m going to lose, I will do it on my terms. I will do what feels true to me and brings me joy.”

Bug is out now. Hill concludes the Bug Tour tonight at The Bellwether, Los Angeles.

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