Rosy Mackinnon has been writing songs since the tender age of 12. She joined her first band at 15 and by 16 had begun commandeering her dad’s computer to record her original tracks (she figured out how to mix them, using Logic, on her own). Her debut single, “Getting Home,” was released in December of 2021; her second release, “Kill Me Sarah,” is out today.
“Getting Home” and “Kill Me Sarah” are both misty, enveloping tunes; the sort of music that imparts a sense of tender nostalgia to anything it might end up sound-tracking. Add delicate instrumentation and a sense of self and humor that’s rare to find in any artist, especially in one so young, and you have a recipe for rapidly rising talent. Rosy Mackinnon’s one to watch.
She lists Jockstrap, Adrienne Lenker and Leonard Cohen among her recent musical influences—before the first lockdown she was heavily inspired by Weyes Blood and the Velvet Underground, but her tastes have since shifted somewhat. Most listeners consider her work to fall under the ambient or experimental indie genres, and Rosy agrees: “I think I make songs that people could listen to after a long day or a night out… I’m under the indie bracket somewhere.”
She says that “Kill Me Sarah” was “… loosely based on a conversation I had with a friend. They wanted me to pretend to be someone else and I thought it could be an interesting narrative for a song. In the lyrics I made it more about an unhealthy relationship, not being enough for a person, even though they want more you put up with it for a time. I made the narrator murder their love interest at the end which I didn’t intend until I wrote the very last verse. I don’t think I fully realized until I read through it all again and I was like, ‘Holy shit!’ I called it “Kill Me Sarah” as a joke at first… it’s a Radiohead reference.”
“Kill Me Sarah,” is out today on Bandcamp and Spotify. You can follow Rosy Mackinnon on Instagram @rosymackinnon, on Spotify and on Bandcamp.
