There are producers, and then there are collaborators—musicians who can coax the perfect sound out of an artist because they intimately know the people they work with. Much of the time, that difference boils down to whether or not the musician is a good hang. Sega Bodega, who has produced hits for a close group of alt-pop artists, does a lot of hanging, and he’s found his work most fulfilling in less formal settings—in his Paris apartment; at a cramped record shop in Iceland with Björk. The chronically online will recall him saying his favorite part of working with Shygirl is “When she gets the K out.” Sega—aka Salvador Navarette—has recorded the best of his impish, bass-blown dance-pop this way. “Sometimes you get lucky,” he once said, “but I’ve never found so much luck in booking a studio, paying for the hour, ‘Let’s make an idea.’”
His new Arabic shoegaze band, Kiss Facility, started with a DM from singer-songwriter Mayah Alkhateri. The two became online friends for a year, and after twiddling with voice notes she sent him, Navarrette agreed to collaborate fully on one condition: Alkhateri, who is Emirati-Egyptian, could never sing in English. Navarrette doesn’t speak Arabic himself, and would have to rely on the feeling of Alkhateri’s vocals to select the best takes. Eager to achieve universally understood emotions through her voice, Alkhateri rustled through the discography of musicians who have famously ensorcelled listeners through blurry sound. She studied English shoegaze band Slowdive, Swedish dream-pop group the Radio Dept., and Celtic new-age icon Enya, artists who inspire tears with visceral clarity, even when the lyrics remain impenetrable. Their first single, “In My Room,” was released in 2023, and the band has since become an IYKYK favorite for New York club kids who rave on the weekend and see esoteric trip-hop at Nightclub 101 on Tuesdays.
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Three years later, the pair are partners not only in work but in love, and their debut album, KHAZNA, makes you feel like you’ve been let into a party in a gothy, red-hued bar. It goes a bit beyond the shoegaze genre—in fact it’s more like nu-gaze, with harder guitar riffs and crisper drums crossing over into new wave, alternative, and hyperpop fused with pop-punk. Like the artists she modelled her songs after, Alkhateri’s rich soprano builds gauzy mazes around blustering gusts of guitar and synth. The Arabic harmonies, sung pristinely, are a clever pairing for a genre already so steeped in bleary-eyed mystique. Without understanding Arabic, it’s a marvel to follow Alkhateri’s reverb-swaddled ornamentation as she cradles each syllable up and down non-Western scales—each guttural tone and sweet, clear note is as dynamic as it is precious, surging up from the depths.
The lyrics are devotional; she sings the word “heart” two dozen times across 11 songs. The love described is classical in tone, so tragically all-consuming and full of shadows that to listen on an iPhone seems almost profane. Tracks paint visions of hearts pulled between two ropes, a beauty comparable to the moon, a lover who represents both life and an empty heart. The downswept trip-hop of “Absent From My Eyes” slides forward in slow motion as Alkhateri sings deep into her lower register, “يراكَ قلبي و إن غُيِّبْتَ عَنْ بَصَري ”كُلِّي فِداكْ ”(“My heart sees you, even when you are hidden from my sight/All of me is a sacrifice for you”). On “Flux,” one of the more traditional shoegaze songs, her voice becomes as delicate and lush as the burnt crust on crème brûlée: “ مازار صيفي حين كُنتُ شتاءُه ”(“You never came to my summer when I was your winter”).
