Orion Sun is in love with the process. “I feel like my most shallow and my deepest self when I’m in the recording process, because I’m digging deep but to everyone in my life, that’s all I can talk about,” she laughs.” And so after two years in creation mode, it’s no surprise that she’s still coming to terms with what life looks like outside of the studio. “Not being there feels weird, I feel weird! But I went to a flea market today for the first time,” she says proudly. The child of two artists, raised in South Jersey, now based in Los Angeles, Orion has cultivated a huge cult following with her singular lane of intoxicatingly intimate alt R&B and warmly analogue aesthetics. Featured on the opener of Fred Again’s latest album USB, having supported Daniel Caesar on his 2023 tour, been sampled by Bryson Tiller and amassing almost 5 million monthly listeners on Spotify, all as an independent artist, the 28-year-old is primed and giddy to release her self-titled album Orion. The name alone signifies the gradual build up to this moment, she explains. “[Orion] is a hunter and that mentality, you know, you need patience when you’re out there. You could be there for days. Waiting for that perfect sound, that perfect feeling.”

At the start of 2021, singer-songwriter chlothegod threw a farewell party for her musical career. She had been writing songs since high school, but hadn’t yet garnered the financial stability or level of recognition she wanted and decided it was time to move on. But, despite her best efforts, she couldn’t stop making music. “I was still setting up my microphone and laptop in my kitchen every day and recording,” she says. “When I talked about quitting, I was not being honest with myself about how expressing myself through music is necessary for my health and my development as a person. It makes me feel complete.” Not long after that party, EQT Recordings, the label she’s now signed to, reached out, and within a week chlothegod was on a flight to Los Angeles. “This has been the story of my life so far,” she says. “I'm always very committed to my decisions, but then something fairly miraculous will happen and I'm on a new path.”