Kleo Captures the Euphoric Feeling of Falling in Love in “Beautiful Life”
Kleo is no stranger to wearing her heart out on her sleeve and fully immersing herself, and her listeners, in a magical world of complete euphoric bliss and ethereality. Kleo sings a soulful ballad immersed with passion and romantic fantasies about believing the world is beautiful through rose colored glasses – where you can lie down in the grass, gaze at the stars and dream.
The '90s inflected soft pop single is reminiscent of the dreamy, nostalgic embrace of music from artists like Clairo and ELIO. In the song, Kleo interprets the idiom carpe diem. It's an invitation to believe in the world as something beautiful, and in the ability to bring love to those around you, even when it seems impossible. “Beautiful Life” is accompanied by a hyper romantic driven music video where Kleo channels all her 90s aesthetics into a euphoric world.
Meditation, Vedic astrology, hyper romance, rock n’ roll and classic 90s pop songs, Kleo’s music speaks to the zeitgeist of 2022, where dreamy, alternative poetic pop breaks taboos.
“I wanted to dream up if I could just create a world, a universe that I could step into where everything would be okay and everything was made out of pure love,” Kleo says. “It was also me trying to tell myself that the world can be this magical place and we need to have faith and we need to trust and love ourselves.”
The songstress leans into a euphoric feeling of falling in love, an invitation to believe the world is made of beauty and charm. Kleo’s biggest message is to have the ability to bring love to those around you, most importantly, your own self love.
If you’re head over heels falling in love with someone, Kleo invites you into her world of romantic fantasy and vulnerable introspection of being in love.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Thank you for talking to Unpublished Magazine. Our readers would love to get to know you and your music more. Can you tell us what type of music you make and how you broke into the industry?
[KLEO]: I would categorize my songwriting as being fairly traditional, but also dreamy indie-pop – that's how I usually label it. That's of course very broad. I grew up with 90s music and was very much influenced by underground stuff like Mazzy Star and Radiohead had some amazing songs as well. Very inspired by the whole organic tradition as well.
[UNPUBLISHED]: I’m a big fan of Mazzy Star, what do you love most about her or what about her music connects with you the most?
[KLEO]: What I love about her mostly because she has a way of conveying lyrics and singing that just hits you right in the heart. I don't know what it is, she's just extremely authentic, but also different in outer space at the same time. I love that combo.
[UNPUBLISHED]: When you're not making music and you're in the studio, what do you do to help inspire your creativity?
[KLEO]: Meditation has helped me with that. I've been meditating for five years – transcendental meditation. I was watching Twin Peaks, which is my all time favorite show. I don't think there's anything above that, but I watched an interview with him and it was quite extraordinary how he described transcendence, so I had to try it for myself, so that's one way. I go to the movies a lot and am very inspired by movie scenes and sometimes I even script my music or songs to specific scenes or different moods in different scenes.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Did you teach yourself transcendental meditation?
[KLEO]: No, that's pretty advanced. I've been taking several courses since then, so I am up to two hours a day now, which is a lot. But my mentor only sleeps five hours a night because he meditates for five hours during the day. It’s pretty extreme, you have to take this massive class which takes place this year in Thailand, but it's very expensive to become a teacher and takes up a lot of your time as well. Maybe later in life.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Your latest single release, “Beautiful Life,” is an invitation to step into a beautiful world. Can you talk to me about the inspiration behind the single and how the creative process looked like for you?
[KLEO]: I was very inspired by 90s bands and there’s a song by Verve called “Bittersweet Symphony,” and it has a very grandiose vibe to it and I wanted to do some sort of rock anthem. A rock anthem if Caroline Polacheck would’ve done it. I was inspired by that and The Beatles for some reason. My producer talked about integrating a psychedelic vibe of the whole Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club phase, reflecting that lyrically and also instrumentally – especially the second verse there's these chorus drums and there's chorus all over the lead vocals all the way through. That was definitely an inspiration, but when we work in the studio, it's mainly me presenting an idea or a concept and he has an upright piano and I will sit and come up with the melodies while he'll work on a beat that we agreed on. My first single, he was working on a double time beat, and I thought that it was going to be this beautiful, extremely sad ballad, so it's very much a collaborative process. He's doing the soundscaping, then we mesh it together and I also produce. For me, creating music is very much in order for me to feel connected to it. I have to sit by the piano. My grandfather was a piano player and a teacher as well, so I feel most comfortable writing music when I can sort of sense kinesthetically like, ‘What am I playing?’ ‘What are we creating?’
[UNPUBLISHED]: “Beautiful Life” touches on the ability to bring love to those around you. What are some ways that you show self love to yourself?
[KLEO]: I actually listen to a lot of Louise Hay, she's this big self help guru. I tell myself how much I love, accept and appreciate myself in the mirror every single day. It actually works.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Has the creation of “Beautiful Life” helped you process any emotions?
[KLEO]: We haven't really shared this with anyone, but something dramatically life changing. I lost someone in my close family just before we went into the studio to create the first EP that's coming out in November. I wasn't sure I could write anything, so “Beautiful Life” was the icebreaker you could say because I wasn't sure I could even work under the circumstances, but then I came up with this idea. I wanted to dream up if I could just create a world, a universe that I could step into where everything would be okay and everything was made out of pure love – that's also where the Beatles reference comes in – then everything would fall into place. My life could go back to the way it was or it could become extremely blissful all the time, so I wanted to mirror some of the best experiences I've had with meditation in that song. It was also me trying to tell myself that the world can be this magical place and we need to have faith and we need to trust and love ourselves.
[UNPUBLISHED]: What do you love most about this song? Is there like a specific lyric or message that stands out to you? What excites you the most about “Beautiful Life?”
[KLEO]: Every time it gets to the second part of the second verse, everything sort of falls apart in a way and there's chorus all over the place. We have this totally autonomous synth role playing like this random melody going on in the background and it says “We're melting in time.” I just thought that I created most of my lyrics with my lyric writer Marcus John, and we were really excited about this whole psychedelic production.
[UNPUBLISHED]: You also released the “Beautiful Life” music video which is inspired by pop cultural trends from the 90s which you touched on a little bit. What inspirations did you pull from and how was the filming experience for you?
[KLEO]: First when my manager presented me with the idea of shooting in black and white. I was hesitant, but all of a sudden I thought of “Wicked Game” by Cris Isaak, which is a song that I completely fell in love with at seven years old. All of my mood boards started to contain these old Calvin Klein commercials with Kate Moss in those oversized jeans, and the jeans I'm wearing in the music video actually belong to my mother. She wore them back in the 80s and the 90s, so it’s a cute little reference.
[UNPUBLISHED]: “Beautiful Life” follows your debut single “Miss You.” Has the creative process been different for “Beautiful Life” and have you taken any new approaches or been experimenting more lyrically or instrumental since the release?
[KLEO]: “Miss You” in itself was definitely a step away from what I thought my music was going to look like. Since I've been always writing these heavy ballads at the piano, it took some convincing to get me to release a song that has such a high tempo. At the same time, I think that “Beautiful Life” kind of expanded what I thought I could do in a sense because it’s way more extroverted and even pop. I think I'm going to lean more in that direction from now on and not be afraid. Also in the music video, I'm smiling a lot. It took some energy to smile at the camera and dance and be more outgoing than I usually am, but it's really been a relief to me.
[UNPUBLISHED]: When you're writing, are you pulling from personal experiences or is it general storytelling?
[KLEO]: I think it would be lying if I said that it wasn't personal almost all the time. I like the drama and often I sort of mirror a scene from a movie or a character or story from a movie because it's like something in my own life. So everything is an autobiography in some way or another.
[UNPUBLISHED]: If you could describe “Beautiful Life” in three words, which would you choose and why?
[KLEO]: Happily ever after, because that's what my hopes are for everyone in the future, that it can actually change something when we release it. I hope that people can listen to it on their bikes in the morning, going to work or going home from work.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Your music is very dreamy and reminiscent of classic romantic tropes. Do you pull inspiration from your relationships, or romance novels and movies?
[KLEO]: Growing up in the 90s with Romeo and Juliet, Twin Peaks and those grandiose love stories, it kind of has become a big part of the project, but also because love has been and is for many people a great theme, because we ask so many questions. ‘How do we know what love really is?’ It's often portrayed as an extremely hyper-romantic thing, and it's obtainable in a way. There's also a longing to my music that just comes from not knowing how to, but it's so abstract. I have many questions about love that I would like to ask someone or something.
[UNPUBLISHED]: What’s some advice that you wish you had given to your younger self in terms of relationships and love, or wish someone had given you when you were younger?
[KLEO]: Take your time, but the more I learn to care for myself, the more I'm actually able to assess the situation and what I really wish for. There's a difference between a want and a need, so I would actually tell myself to go find love for myself first before anything else.
[UNPUBLISHED]: How are you feeling in this current era of your career and what does the rest of the year look like for you that you would love to share with the magazine?
[KLEO]: Extremely excited. I have some upcoming support gigs before my first headliner in Copenhagen which I'm very excited about. Everything is so new, and on Monday, I'm going to the studio to create my debut album with my producer again. We're inviting a lot of songwriters into the studio. It's very exciting to see what comes from it.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Congratulations on the tour and the debut album! Is there anything that you would love to share with us about the album?
[KLEO]: The hyper-romance continues!
[UNPUBLISHED]: Is there anything you've been doing to help combat any anxiety when performing or touring? Do you have any pre-show or post-show rituals that help you ensure that you play your best show?
[KLEO]: I actually just started having classes with an opera singer, so I'm practicing for an hour a day and it mostly has to do with my breath. I have taken up running. Besides meditation, which is something I just have to do everyday – it's like brushing my teeth – I don't leave the house without doing it. So rituals include doing that and also spending some time on my own. I'm very receptive to energy, so I'm also very selective when it comes to the people I surround myself with.
[UNPUBLISHED]: What’s your sun, moon and rising?
[KLEO]: I'm into Vedic astrology which is the ancient system that's based directly on astronomy. I am a Virgo rising and the ruler of my Ascendant is placed in Pisces. My sun is in the eighth house, so that's very Scorpio-like but it is Aries. My moon is in the 12th house, so a lot of Pisces stuff is going on.
[UNPUBLISHED]: What is your wildest dream as an artist? If you could have one thing happen to you, like a milestone or dream collaboration you hope to achieve in your career, what would that look like for you?
[KLEO]: Glastonbury has always been a dream. I love festivals and that would be a crazy experience. The first time I experienced Kurt Cobain was the MTV Unplugged performance in New York and watching the VHS of it, and to do one of those live sessions would be amazing. It would definitely be a milestone. I'm a huge Lana Del Rey fan and some sort of collaboration would be amazing.
