OyamaIS

Since their emergence in 2012, the Icelandic collective Oyama has gone through several transformations. Having started as a bonafide shoegaze unit, the band manifested kinship with My Bloody Valentine, Ride, and Mogwai through walls of distorted noise on their debut EP I Wanna. Released in 2014, their first full-length album Coolboy showcased their idiosyncratic songwriting, earning recognition from leading music media. As KEXP's Jim Beckmann noted, "Sharing a name with the relatively small Japanese central city, [the band] has grown into a sonic metropolis of multiple influences, from psychedelic to ambient." Their second album Everyone Left, while marked by a contemplative vibe and softer, watercolor sound, shares thematic threads with its predecessor – particularly in its exploration of water and time, captured both as abstract powerful phenomena and through the narrator's reflective lens.