As a 15-year-old, Sacramento, California’s Kelly Rosenthal was already fed up with being a teenager. She found herself at odds with what she characterizes as the “vapidity” of daily interactions and surface “struggles” of youth. Though never much surrounded by music, she locked herself away in her room to teach herself guitar as an outlet to express both her growing dissatisfaction with her environment as well as her hope for a better way of living. Now, eight years later, the half-Korean, half-Italian alternative pop songwriter has adopted the persona I Am Strikes and is ready to tell the world how she sees things with her debut EP, Low Standards, out June 23rd.
I Am Strikes takes an explosive stance on alternative pop, unloading heavy topics over heavy synths that beat with hard-fought optimism. Perhaps none of the three tracks on Low Standards illustrate this better than the latest single, “Bitches”. What starts as a slowly stalking bass line steps out of the shadows to reveal a determined beast ready to devour a former lover. Rosenthal at first seems to still be infatuated with the old flame, but admits that wanting to “be the air you breathe” is really just a desire to “feel make believe.” A pounding chorus pushes her to let go of the pieces of her broken heart as she realizes that, “Shooting stars and four-leaf clovers don’t grant their wishes to bitches who live on excuses.”
“I wrote ‘Bitches’ as a desperate anger anthem,” Rosenthal says. “There’s a common thread throughout – the desire to be desired and the notion that love is not always enough – however, the takeaway is this: the universe does not conspire in favor of fault. Those who have wronged will meet their match. In other words, karma’s a bitch.”
For more from I Am Strike’s Low Standards EP, check out the lead single “Love Is Just a Way to Die”.
Low Standards Tracklist:
01. Out of Breath
02. Love Is Just a Way to Die
03. Bitches
