Fresh off her fourth album and a new collaboration with Baba Stiltz, Okay Kaya shares five favorites with us.

Kaya Wilkins aka Okay Kaya is a Norwegian-American singer-songwriter whose words cut deep into contemporary states of being. Like a modern-day Judee Sill or Nick Drake, Wilkins conjures moods with a fearless vulnerability and preternatural insight, acutely reflecting on a generation’s everyday joys and sorrows. “It’s fortunate to be able to sit down and amplify something through oneself, and that can be esoteric in many ways, spiritual, but I like to base it all also in just the human experience of being alive and having to eat food, sleeping or not sleeping, these kinds of mundane things.” At a packed show earlier this month at the Teragram Ballroom, we watched as an entire room filled with fans rapturously sung along to her delicate and intimate songs about mental illness, health care, and sexual fluidity.

Born in New Jersey, Wilkins grew up in a musical family with her mother’s record collection (filled with soul, funk, hip-hop) and five brothers who were obsessed with black metal. Since starting out on her musical journey nearly ten years ago, the model-musician-actor has released four studio albums of earthy mood-pop and collaborated with a diverse range of artists including King Krule, Nick Hakim, John Caroll Kirby, L’Rain, and Anne Imhof (amongst many others). 2024 has been one of Wilkins’ busiest yet with the release of her critically acclaimed album Oh My God – That’s So Me, a tour of Europe and North America, along with the recent release of a brand new collaboration with fellow mercurial songwriter Baba Stiltz.

Released earlier this week, “‘I Believe In Love’ is about loneliness, longing and safety,” Baba Stiltz explains, “the joyful silliness of coupling and the fear it inevitably can lead to.” “I am very lucky to get to sing this banger of a song with Baba,” adds Kaya. “He makes me believe in all the silly things.”

To celebrate the release of her latest album and new single, Wilkins shared five favorites with us along with a few words about each selection.

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Cody Chessnut – The Headphone Masterpiece (2002)

This album is simply masterpiece 

Big inspiration to date when recording in terms of its production, lyrics and genre-welcoming eccentricity

Mort Garson – Didn’t You Hear? (1970)

“Did you ever feel like someone you never got to know and to the one that walks inside your clothes – didn’t you hear?” 

When I need to have a good, dramatic “I’m a real person and I will touch some moss” walk this is the record I play 

Judee Sill – Heart Food (1973)

Eerie, inimitable – The harmonies in          The Donor to the words of an Ancient Greek prayer 

Like seeing God for 8 minutes?

Djivan Gasparyan – I Will Not Be Sad In This World (1983)

If you wanna see/feel/touch/taste God for 39 full minutes

This record may be for you 

Billie Holiday – The Essential Billie Holiday At Carnegie Hall Recorded Live (1956)

I tend to not read/listen to music biographies, as I’d rather take in music in all its timeless ~magic ~splendor, but growing up we had my grandmother Kirsten’s copy of this record in the house. Ms Holidays incredible memoir is essential, to be kept in ones heart at all times

“No two people on earth are alike, and it’s got to be that way in music, or it isn’t music. I can’t stand to sing the same song the same way two nights in succession, let alone two years or ten years. If you can, it ain’t music, it’s close order drill or exercise or yodeling or something, not music”