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OHYUNG

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OHYUNG, “Iowa” (Self-Released, 2026)

This “ambient transsexual” homage to Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska (“his dark night of the soul with red text on a black background”) was inspired by the eleven months spent in Iowa after “avowed club rat, alt pop star aspirant, and sophisticated film composer Lia Ouyang Rusli hauled herself and her two parakeets there from Bushwick unto the relative quiet and spaciousness of the plains.”

Unsurprisingly, that move was a bit of a culture shock, as OHYUNG traded raves and Brooklyn nightlife for “prairie sunsets, transgender care bans, all-ages hardcore shows, screaming hog farms, corn reaching for the heavens, tornado sirens, big beautiful skies, the world’s largest truckstop, and a brutal winter,” but she also notes that Iowa gave us Arthur Russell, the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and Transcendental Meditation as well. Fittingly, the album mirrors that unique mixture of beauty and menace and shares Springsteen’s own pared-to-the-bone starkness, which is quite an unexpected and haunting reinvention in the wake of 2025’s stellar pop-minded opus You Are Always On My Mind yet remains every bit as compelling (if not more so).

In a roundabout way, it seems like OHYUNG could not have made Iowa without making a “pop” album first, as it got her thinking about what remains “when she removes the scaffolding” and “grinds up the bones of the song.” Notably, she did not treat that as a purely rhetorical question and concluded that the answer was “ghostly echoes, mouth sounds, simulated tape hiss, and late-night gloom.” To my ears, it seems like OHYUNG used that as the starting point of Iowa, then built upwards from there using a palette of “mangled chorales, lo-res rips of devotional music, surreptitious field recordings, and assorted synth pads.” 

Notably, the opening “purgatory” hits upon almost all of those elements and serves as quite an effective statement of intent, as subtly warped choral samples drift through a spacious landscape of seismic sub bass wobbles, hiss swells, nightmarish howls, breathy synth chords, and “massive subwoofer activations that could be heaven’s kick drum or the slam of an AI-guided bomb.” At first, it all feels a bit disjointed and unfocused, but it soon becomes hauntingly beautiful once the chord progress syncs up with the interwoven swirls of celestial choral samples.  

While it seems fair to describe the rest of the album as eleven other variations on that same theme or at least the same sustained vibe, it feels analogous to watching a world-class chef confidently prepare an array of excellent meals from the same small and simple batch of fresh, well-chosen ingredients and some of those “meals” ascend to truly sublime heights. In lead single “all dolls go to heaven,” for example, clipped swells of tape hiss evoke rhythmically crashing waves while the bittersweet and sacred sounds of an angelic choir drift across my beachside idyll like an elusive dream. I especially love the organic unpredictability of those hiss swells, as the occasional crash of an unexpected larger wave adds a nice counterbalance of elemental power to the hazy, slow-motion beauty of the choral samples. 

Elsewhere, “nevada” tweaks the formula with more deep, reverberant subwoofer bombs and streaking, glassy melodies that languorously undulate over tender, slow-motion chords and frayed, smeary choral samples that feel like faint radio transmissions from heaven. My favorite piece, however, is probably “the black angel,” which weaves together hauntingly angelic and mysterious choral loops, whispers, and footsteps to approximate a killer beatless deconstruction of Aphex Twin’s own absolutely killer deconstruction of Gavin Bryars “The Sinking of the Titanic” (“Raising The Titanic”). While the rest of the songs do not quite scale the same heights, they certainly do an excellent job of sustaining Iowa’s mesmerizing spell and it is that spell that makes this such a unique and beautiful album, as OHYUNG had a bold vision of desolate beauty and gorgeous melodies that flicker in and out of focus like ghosts and she absolutely fucking nailed it.

Listen here.

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OHYUNG, “You Are Always On My Mind” (NNA Tapes, 2025)

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This is not my first exposure to this shapeshifting project from Brooklyn-based film composer Lia Ouyang Rusli, but it may as well be, as this inspired outsider pop album bears little resemblance to the understated ambiance of 2022’s imagine naked! or its more noise-damaged and hip-hop-inspired predecessors. OHYUNG envisioned the album’s overarching theme as “my trans self and my former self in conversation, from both perspectives,” but the stylistic direction is also steered quite a bit by her deep fondness for inventively repurposing “generic string loops” found in online sample packs, which instills many of these songs with a sense of wide-eyed classic pop wonder. Curiously unmentioned, however, is an equal fondness for big, stomping drum machine beats that sound lovingly inspired by Janet Jackson’s “Nasty” era. That alone is a winning combination, but OHYUNG further ices that cake with quite a few great hooks as well.

The piece that best exemplifies OHYUNG’s newly revealed pop genius is “i swear that i could die rn,” which combines a muscular drum machine stomp with a cool seesawing synth motif and a bittersweetly beautiful vocal melody. Despite its ostensibly dark title, it is a wonderfully poignant and sweet pop song, which makes sense as the piece was inspired by warm memories of past raves and the “feeling that I could die at this moment and be happy.” I was also delighted by the recurring inscrutable vocal sample and the seamless way that the choruses become warmer and more harmonically rich.

Notably, there is a similarly stellar epilogue near the end of the album, as “years ago,” as big, booming drums and a swooningly lovely string loop provide the backdrop for moving lyrical nods to earlier moments in both the album and Lia’s own life (her previous self being “always on her mind,” of course). Elsewhere, I was similarly impressed with the lush and dreamy “dancing on the soft knife,” which could pass for an unusually wild and great Seefeel remix if the spoken word vocals were excised. “No Good” is yet another favorite, as a big driving beat propels another great vocal hook that is beautifully enhanced with layered strings and cool synth flourishes.

The remainder of the album is a bit more eclectic, but OHYUNG’s inspiration remains quite strong throughout her various stylistic detours. For example, “5 strings {lake}” features some guest verses from rapper j. fisher over skittering drums and a lush ascending string motif that favorably calls to mind Gang Star’s iconic “Moment of Truth.” Elsewhere, the opening “you are always on my mind” has more of a muscular and driving rock groove, but the timing of the string loops gives it a wonderfully swirling, delirious, and off-kilter feel (and the twinkling piano crescendo is quite nice as well).

There is also an autotuned nod to contemporary R&B ( “im holding close the memory fades”) and an autotuned lovesick reverie (“id rather be a ghost by your side than enter heaven without you”) as well as a few pleasant but insubstantial interludes. None of them quite recapture the magic of the album’s highlights, but most of them feature a strong enough idea at their heart to justify their inclusion (like the squiggly synth motif in the closing “im coming towards you”).

That said, the overall arc of the album is quite an effective one and there are always enough weird touches in the periphery to ensure that this is an immersive headphone album from start to finish. Unsurprisingly, I would have been perfectly happy with some good immersive headphone psychedelia, but that aspect pales in comparison to the soul, poetry, and melodicism of OHYUNG’s autobiographical songcraft. Unsurprisingly, I have already seen this album hailed as one of the year’s finest and I agree wholeheartedly, but it is also a massive creative leap forward for OHYUNG in general.

Listen here.