Mark Stefanos
For the past three years, Los Angeles-based electro-pop artist RYL0 has been building the world of 5T4RP0W3R, her debut album arriving October 2. Rooted in Greek mythology but centered on her own experiences, the record uses ancient stories as a lens to examine identity, personal growth and the relationship between past, present and future. Rather than retelling familiar myths, RYL0 says the album draws modern parallels from them, creating a conceptual narrative that reflects her evolving sense of self.
The project also marks a creative turning point. Developed alongside executive producers Taydex and AOBeats, 5T4RP0W3R underwent years of refinement, with songs revisited and reshaped long after they were first written. The result, RYL0 says, is her most emotionally complete work yet — one that embraces both confidence and vulnerability while focusing not on romance, but on her relationship with herself and the future she’s working toward. So far, singles “Power Trip,” “Gold,” “Downfall,” and her latest release, “Odyssey,” are available on your favorite platforms.
The New Jersey-born singer-songwriter continues to blur the line between musician and filmmaker, directing the creative vision behind the album’s visual world while drawing on years performing in Los Angeles’ underground pop scene — from opening for number of prominent artists, like underscores at El Rey in 2024, to performing at all the top hyperpop parties.
RYL0 (Kaio Cesar @kaiocsr)
Ahead of 5T4RP0W3R‘s release, we spoke with RYL0 about mythmaking, perfectionism, the evolution of her artistic persona and why this debut feels like the culmination of everything she’s been building toward.
LA Weekly: What drew you to mythology as the central framework for this project? Do you feel like you are re-living those stories?
RYL0: With 5T4RP0W3R, it was never the objective to re-create or re-live the stories told through classic mythology in a literal sense. I never wanted it to feel like I’m trying to rewrite any narratives or bring a new perspective to deeply-cherished and well-known history. The goal was to use the framework of Greek mythos to simply help inform and guide the story of the album through modern parallels. A pretty big theme across the album is how the past, present, future all interact with each other and I decided to explore that by using one of the most popular ancient landscapes for referential context.
Putting together a project for three years is a journey (or Odyssey) in itself — did your relationship with the music change as you evolved alongside it?
Absolutely. Only the first six months of the album process were dedicated to the initial writing phase — the rest of the process was pretty much reserved for reopening every project file and refining every song. We would make a song in 2023 and revisit it in 2025 with new ears and then try to figure out what else we could do to make it sound fresh again.
I’ve made a handful of projects throughout my time as an artist, but I’ve never worked on anything else this way. This was also the first project I’ve worked on with executive producers, and it definitely pushed me to grow more than I ever thought I could. Just as I would think we were nearing the end of the process, either Tay (Taydex) or Andrew (AOBeats) would be like “No, we should keep going.” That’s how we got “Downfall,” “Power Trip,” “Odyssey” and the next single. It’s very cliché, but good things really do take time and I learned that more than ever while making this album.
RYL0 (Kaio Cesar @kaiocsr)
What can fans expect from the full-length 5T4RP0W3R? Will there be a side of you we haven’t heard before?
There are many moments where I’ve been pretty honest and vulnerable in my previous work, but I think this album will feel like my most raw to a lot of listeners. In the past, I’ve used individual projects to explore one given emotion — my I’m the Best!! and I’m the Worst!! mixtapes were deep dives in self-belief and self-deprecation, respectively, while Fragments and Last Resort were experiments around crafting heartbreak and feel-good anthems.
What makes 5T4RP0W3R new territory for me is incorporating positive and negative emotions on a singular project at the same time. There aren’t any songs about love on this album either — the whole thing is about my relationship to myself, and my own destiny.
What part of yourself does RYL0 allow you to express that your everyday self doesn’t?
I don’t get recognized often by any means, but there have been a handful of moments when a fan will meet me in person and have no idea I’m the same RYL0 they’ve seen or heard online. I’ve even had close friends and family members double take the photos I post as RYL0 because they hardly recognize me.
The funny thing is I really don’t look that different in everyday clothes with no makeup on, but there’s definitely a big shift in my energy when I put on the uniform and lean into the pop girl persona. People act like you can’t turn it off and you have to be an Artist all the time, but that’s definitely not true in my case. I think I have a very unassuming temperament in my day-to-day life but luckily, I have RYL0 as an outlet to feed the part of me that still wants to be seen and celebrated. It’s really fun to play into that fantasy and continuously mold my own image to serve the music I’m making.
You’re fully involved in your visual artistry in addition to music — how do you feel about having that additional medium to create through?
It feels really full circle to be able to build this world out visually having spent so many years of my life thinking I would end up as a filmmaker. In a way, I’m still filmmaking … I’m the creative director and primary editor on all of my video content, but a lot of work comes together by relying on my visual collaborators — Kaio Cesar on photo, Euan Allen on CG treatments, Jack Callahan on music videos. I’ve been working with the three of them on and off as early as 2022, and I’m incredibly grateful to have found them all along the way. While I might ideate most of the initial concepts, I would never be able to bring them to life without this team. The process really does remind me of when I wanted to be a film director, but the scale is a lot more manageable.
RYL0 (Kaio Cesar @kaiocsr)
You’ve performed at some of LA’s most prominent parties like Subculture and Heav3n. How is it to have that connection to LA’s underground scene?
I first got involved in 2021, playing a few DIY drag shows out in Long Beach. That same year, I was asked to play a festival sharing a lineup with Arca and Kero Kero Bonito. Shortly after, I ended up playing my first Subculture when my friend Umru booked me to play the stage he was curating. Right after that, I played my first Heav3n, which is a party I started going to in 2019 long before I had the chance to play one.
In addition to playing parties, I’ve also been direct support for a lot of artists I’ve looked up to in the scene. I’ve opened for underscores at El Rey, That Kid at El Cid, Umru & Petal Supply at Zebulon, Namasenda at Catch One, Sophie Cates at the Moroccan Longue … It feels really good to say I’ve been a part of that scene for years now, and it also feels cool to be able to exist in all kinds of venues: backyards, bars, clubs, theatres, etc.
Follow RYL0 on Instagram @ryl0fficial, and listen to “Odyssey” here.