Be it Joy Division, Nirvana or Phoebe Bridgers, there are certain artists who have captured adolescent melancholy for their generation. Twenty-one-year-old singer-songwriter Ekkstacy (real name Khyree Zienty; known as Stacy) makes that music for his own cohort, offering up sweet, engaging vocals and guitars drenched in heady melodrama and deep feeling.
As a kid in Vancouver, Zienty grew up on SoundCloud rappers and 2008-era surfer indie (think the Drums, Wavves, Girls etc). In high school, after his parents’ divorce, his first experimentation with drugs led to a psychotic breakdown and a fall from a second-floor window. The subsequent hospitalisation and aftermath left him depressed and anxious, so he began to channel the feelings into his music: woozy, rap-adjacent tracks, dour emo and plush indie pop.
