June McDoom

June McDoom’s debut full-length, Follow the Light, feels exactly like exploring liminal space and pushing forward, slipping out of time and waking up someplace new, a place that’s barely familiar enough to feel like home but somehow already wholly personal & meant for you alone. She records as June McDoom, born Alyssa, June being a nickname one of her grandmothers, Joan, went by, a name she thought was cool to carry and simply liked the sound of. June grew up in a Jamaican household in South Florida, an existence built of strong extended family, communal care, bass & harmonics. On the edge of the Florida Everglades, two musics in one room, meshing into something indescribable. Lushness as past and premonition. The low end of where she comes from, and the high, gentle harmony of what she would eventually seek out, sharing the same humid air. “Without You,” the album’s lead single, carries the fingerprints of that patience: it began with live drums running straight through & slowly became something else entirely, the deeper she steeped it in Cocteau Twins, until a dub bassline & a shoegaze shimmer met in the middle, in the last place you would think to look for either one. That was the standard she wanted to meet & surpass – but you, listener, will only hear a record that could have gone overboard but didn’t. We turn into the light when things feel dark. We get used to feeling around for it if we can’t see it. We let the warmth of it hit our faces & slowly open eyes to see.