Mei Semones - Kurage

* **NO VINYL—JUST THE PLUSHIE & A DL OF THE EP** There’s no one doing it quite like Mei Semones, the 25-year-old Brooklyn-based guitarist and songwriter blending jazz, bossa nova, and indie-pop. Named an “artist to watch” by Pigeons & Planes, The FADER, the New York Times, and more, Semones is a prolific and rising star; her debut album, Animaru was released in May 2025, followed by “Kurayami” and “Get used to it” later that fall. Her songwriting has a specific and recognizable lightness, an ease in spite of its knotted complexities. It’s a testament to Semones’ discipline and dedication to her craft of guitar playing that her music is so cerebral, but with such a buoyancy and accessibility – an amalgamation of guitar lines swinging from jazz to bossa to math-y to grungier hooks, lyrics fluttering between English and Japanese. To listen to a Mei Semones song is to be delighted, surprised at every turn – it’s the sense that you’ve met an artist with a truly singular melodic point-of-view. On Kurage, Semones’ new collaborative EP, the scope of her musical world continues to widen as she presents three new tracks across relationships and locale. Recorded throughout the fall of 2025, in-between Semones’ whirlwind international touring schedule, each track is grounded in place, in people. “Koneko” (Japanese for “kitten”) features Semones and band in duet with her friend Liana Flores, the British-Brazilian singer-songwriter and guitarist, recorded at the iconic Strongroom Studio in London. “Koneko” is an ode to the two’s relationship and time spent together in the glitzy chaos of London, imbued with a playful sweetness and lyrics in English, Portuguese, and Japanese. “Tooth fairy,” on the other hand, is a bit more mellowed in how it unfolds, encapsulating Semones’ friendship with longtime collaborator John Roseboro and recorded at New York’s Figure 8 Recording. It recounts the two running into each other in Greenpoint after Roseboro happened to lose a tooth on the subway (a classically random New York moment) re-told with a laid-back sense of humor that can only come from years of friendship. Both “Koneko” and “Tooth Fairy” skew higher-energy, technicolor bossa-jazz affairs built out by the full Mei Semones band – Noam Tanzer on bass, Ransom McCafferty on drums, Claudius Agrippa on violin, and Noah Leong on viola – a tight-knit crew of collaborators seemingly reaching the height of their powers. The EP’s final submission, “Kurage” (Japanese for “jellyfish”) is more subdued. Recorded at Solid Sound in Semones’ hometown of Ann Arbor, Michigan “Kurage” is a duet with her father, Don Semones, a chemical engineer by day and euphonium player by night. It also marks his first-ever studio recording. It stands out as maybe the most pared-back Semones release yet, but it feels fitting that it’d be the title track – at the core of each maximalist track after all is just Mei and her guitar, and the song they make together. The foundation for Semones’ entire dazzling catalog is built on that contented solitude, a quiet self-confidence in creativity and expression that comes close to weightlessness, like floating.