Love You Later Embraces the Unknown in “Girl With Headphones”
Love You Later is the solo alt-pop project of Nashville-based artist Lexi Aviles. Pairing electric melodies and honest lyrics with shimmery guitar riffs and euphoric synths, Love You Later’s music makes you feel like you’re in a dream.
Love You Later unveils “Girl With Headphones” that acts as a glimpse into her upcoming debut EP From The Window Seat. Love You Later’s signature brand of effortlessly cool alt-pop shines through on "Girl With Headphones." It opens with a pulsing fuzzy synth arp before blooming with sweetness as Lexi’s dreamy vocals kick in. It's a cinematic and nostalgic song that wouldn't feel out of place in a coming-of-age movie.
“Girl With Headphones” is about feeling out of place and like you are living in your own world. For Love You Later, things were feeling dim at the beginning of the year and it made her think of when she was a kid and she would act like the main character of her own indie film as she is staring out the window of the passenger seat and romanticizing everything the world has to offer her.
“There’s a true vulnerability and weight in this song as I pretty much admit I haven’t been feeling like myself lately. The song also comes with a sense of letting go and realizing maybe that’s what’s stopping me from being truly happy,” Love You Later says. “‘Girl With Headphones’ is about me, the main character, experiencing what it feels like to grow, let go, embrace the unknown, move on and return to myself. It’s a cathartic rollercoaster.”
[UNPUBLISHED]: Thank you for sitting down and talking to Unpublished Magazine. Our readers would love to get to know you and your music more. For any readers who aren’t familiar, what inspires your creative persona and style?
[LOVE YOU LATER]: Just a lot of 80s and 90s alternative female-led alternative music. Lots of Imogen Heap, Frou Frou, Natalie Imbruglia and I love Fleetwood Mac. I’m inspired by a lot of The 1975, Muna and Japanese House.
[UNPUBLISHED]: What was the inspiration behind the Love You Later project?
[LOVE YOU LATER]: I had released music under my own name in the past and at that time, I just really didn't know who I was as an artist and what my sound was until I took a break from music for a little while and then came back to it and started exploring my sound and who I wanted to be. I let the songs speak for themselves. As I was writing them, I realized there was a common theme and all the songs were surrounding love and relationships, not necessarily romantic, but relationships and how they so strongly affect our lives. I knew that I wanted to have a pseudonym and then love being the title. Love You Later just kind of rolled off the tongue. I was specifically inspired by the Japanese House in 2016. I went and saw her open for The 1975 and I had heard some of her music before, but I watched her live and was completely blown away and she's always been an inspiration to me. She has a level of mysticism to her and she doesn’t even give herself away and I think that’s really cool.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Outside the studio, what do you do to channel your creativity for your projects?
[LOVE YOU LATER]: I go on lots of walks, so many walks, and on my drives as well. I feel like those are all definite places where I feel like I gained the most inspiration and good ideas like “Girl With Headphones” and with the recent visualizer that just came out. It’s my first self-directed video, so I came up with the whole video on a walk one day and it felt like the type of video that needed me to be with my headphones on and walking, so it just came to me very naturally.
[UNPUBLISHED]: I love the photo shoot for “Girl With Headphones.” How was your experience during shooting that and the creative inspiration behind it?
[LOVE YOU LATER]: Shooting with Sophia is so fun. I've worked with her on almost everything the last few years and we clicked and became really good friends and shot music videos and photoshoots together. She has a really brilliant mind, but is also such a kind spirit. She's very fun to work with and I think that we bounce off of each other really well creatively. That shoot was super fun. We shot it at this vintage place called Toro in Nashville, and it's a locally owned vintage shop and it was like a studio in the back and they let you pick from the vintage clothes and style it yourself. It's a really cool concept, and for anyone who lives in Nashville, I highly recommend renting that space. Sophie and I did it together, styled it together, put it all together. There was a Pinterest mood board that I had, so we had a vision and we ended up doing our own thing with some inspiration.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Your single “Girl With Headphones” just released and it gives you being in control of your own world from a very vulnerable perspective. What was the inspiration behind the single?
[LOVE YOU LATER]: “Girl With Headphones” came about last year. I was going through a really hard time mentally and emotionally, and it was like this coming to terms moment. I haven’t been feeling like myself lately and just really admitting that and describing how the past year has felt was emotional. It feels like sitting in the passenger seat of a car and not taking control and watching everything around you pass by. There’s a lot of sadness to the song, but there’s a turning point where the bridge is like ‘Maybe someday I’ll call it hindsight.’ It’s a song where you feel like the main character in the movie is drowning out the world and trying to take control of your own life, and by that main character, it’s written about me.
[UNPUBLISHED]: What is your ideal environment to listen to the new single?
[LOVE YOU LATER]: I definitely listened to it on my walks and runs and whenever I'm driving, I feel like it's a good driving song even though the lyrics are sad. I think that there's a lot of healing in the song, and I think that even if you're in a sad mood, it can actually make you feel better because you feel like someone understands and it has that energetic feel and it's happy sonically. Definitely a walking, running and driving moment.
[UNPUBLISHED]: “Girl With Headphones” has very healing aspects to it and you’re really in touch with your vulnerable side. What are some ways you channel this attitude outside the studio in your personal life and it comes alive in your music?
[LOVE YOU LATER]: With my friends and people that I trust, I confide in them the most. In my sessions and my writing, I feel like that’s where I’m the most vulnerable.
[UNPUBLISHED]: “Are You Gonna Care When I Die” is your other upcoming single release. What message, emotions or story do you hope to portray to your listeners with this work?
[LOVE YOU LATER]: It was inspired by the music industry and how it’s evolved over the past few years post-COVID. I started my project in 2017 and I've been doing it for a while and have witnessed how it’s all evolved, and sometimes it gets really frustrating when people don’t give a shit and don’t give you the time of day. Ultimately as artists, especially independent artists, we want people to listen, and oftentimes it feels that because I’m independent and because I’m a young female that doesn’t have a manager or team of people, many don’t take me seriously. That’s what inspired the song, and at the end of the day, I want this song to be the feeling of feeling unimportant and how sometimes people are not worth your time and energy. There’s still a hopeful and fierce aspect of it.
[UNPUBLISHED]: What is some advice you wish someone had given you when you were younger or wish you could give to your younger self in terms of navigating the industry independently?
[LOVE YOU LATER]: As far as management, booking shows and publishing, I do it all myself. The biggest piece of advice I would give is to keep going because people who really care are going to recognize and feel that momentum, and also not only keep going but care, you care first about what you're doing, and you believe in it first, people will feel that and people will grab on to that because they can feel the passion from you. It doesn't matter if it's like 30,000 people that grasp on or 3 million people or 300, but the fact that you know every follower is a person, and I think seeing that for what that is is powerful enough. I think that's really important to remember.
[UNPUBLISHED]: “Girl With Headphones” and “Are You Gonna Care When I Die?” are both sneak peeks into your EP From The Window Seat set to be released in May. What was the inspiration behind the EP?
[LOVE YOU LATER]: The whole inspiration started with “Girl With Headphones” and expanded from there. There’s a lyric from “Girl With Headphones” in the chorus that says, ‘From the window seat, I feel so out of control, so I’ll be the girl with the headphones on.’ It’s a take on watching my life pass me by from a car window. Sometimes I feel like I'm looking down at my life from a bird's eye view and dissociating and wishing I was somewhere else but examining my life from above and really looking at it and asking myself who am I? There’s a lot of movement from being still sitting in the window seat, and I think that’s a really big theme in my life and I am always wanting to move around. Sometimes, I think it’s because I’m too afraid to just be comfortable and it has many meanings but it originates from “Girl With Headphones” and expands from there.
[UNPUBLISHED]: What did the creative process look like for From The Window Seat?
[LOVE YOU LATER]: For this specific EP, every song was written at very different times, and they’ve all been songs that I've written throughout the past couple years and then they just all felt very cohesive and came together as a project. After those songs were written, then once I decided the songs that we're going to do, or put on the EP, we went into the studio to track live drums, bass and guitar. From there we did final production and vocals. It felt very natural, which is my preferred way of doing things.
[UNPUBLISHED]: What is your favorite song From The Window Seat and why do you love this song? Is there a favorite lyric that stands out or draws you in the most?
[LOVE YOU LATER]: “Girl With Headphones” encapsulates the whole EP and what inspired it. I have so many favorite lyrics and moments of every song, but ‘From the window seat, I feel so out of control, so I’ll be the girl with the headphones on,’ sums up the feelings of all the songs and it comes together in that line.
[UNPUBLISHED]: What can listeners expect for you in this new era of yours?
[LOVE YOU LATER]: I'm in the process of booking a few shows in the US for this EP release. Besides the EP I'm working on new music. I think I'm gonna sit with this EP for a little bit because I worked hard on it and I think it deserves to live on its own for a little bit.
[UNPUBLISHED]: My last question for you is how are you feeling in this current era of your career? What does the rest of the year look like for you that you'd like to share with the magazine?
[LOVE YOU LATER]: I feel very content with where I'm at right now, which I haven't felt in a long time and I think a lot of that is because I took my own advice that I shared with you earlier. I genuinely believe in the music that I'm making, and to me that is enough and anything other than that and on top of that is just a cherry on top and really exciting stuff. I feel really excited about the future but also hearing what people think about the new music.
