© Yasmine Kateb
Karin Ann is a Slovakian-born singer-songwriter and indie folk artist whose cinematic songwriting blends emotional honesty, stripped-back vulnerability, and Americana influences. Her new EP Orion serves as the soundtrack to the upcoming sci-fi psychological thriller of the same name, exploring identity, memory, loss, and connection. The project also marks a new chapter in Karin Ann’s artistic evolution, as she makes her feature film acting debut in the film. We caught up with Karin Ann to discuss her new EP Orion, creating music for film, the connection between acting and songwriting, and her evolving sound.
The B-Side Hour: Your new EP Orion serves as the soundtrack to the upcoming film of the same name. How did writing music for an existing story differ from writing songs purely from your own experiences?
Karin Ann: I think it was really helpful that I also got to act in the movie and be immersed in that world because to be able to bring a character to life, you have to do a lot of work and kind of build the character from the ground up, and make them be a real person. To do that, you have to be able to relate to that character in some way. Even if the character is completely different to who you are, you still have to find ways to relate to who they are. Otherwise, you're not going to be able to bring that character to life. Because I had to build a character up, and I had to relate to a character that existed in that world and lived in that world, I think that made it a lot easier to be able to write for the movie in terms of the music, because I got to kind of immerse myself in that world in multiple different ways and not just one. It also helped that I was in touch with the whole team, and I was on the set on days when I wasn't shooting as well. So I got to see certain scenes being filmed, and the other actors bringing those scenes to life. Even though I had a lot of the lyrics written before I even got to set. It still was really helpful, and those songs that were not finished yet, it definitely helped me finalize it. It was a very interesting experience, and something that I was scared to do, but really excited to do.
The B-Side Hour: Your work has always had a cinematic quality, but this is the first time it has literally become part of a film. How did composing for the screen change the way you think about music’s role in storytelling?
Karin Ann: In a way, it didn't, because I said from the beginning to the whole team, “If you have a specific sound in mind, and that sound is not who I am as an artist, then I'm not going to do it.” They would be better off finding somebody who has that specific sound. I was very open with the fact that I'm not going to change who I am as an artist to fit the movie from the beginning. The team was very adamant about the fact that they picked me because they like what I do and they like who I am as an artist, and they kind of let me do whatever I want. They didn't really give me too much direction in what they wanted. They just kind of showed me the mood boards. I had the script. Obviously, I was involved in the acting side of it as well. So we talked a lot about my character in the movie, but that is kind of separate from the music in a way.
I was just in the music side of things. I was kind of given a free rein to do whatever, which in a way made me more scared because whenever I would send something their way, I would be like, "Hey, I'm starting working on this idea. What do you guys think?” They would always just be like, "Yeah, that's great. We love it!”, and nothing else, which kind of made it a lot more daunting of a task, but it also really made me see that they put a lot of trust in me and they really did love what I do and believed in me as an artist.
So in a way, it didn't really change much because it still represents me quite a bit as an artist. I just tried to weave in certain more sci-fi elements in the sound that still worked with the more Folkey sound that I have, and that didn't completely change me as an artist, but still worked a little bit more for that sort of mysterious side of sci-fi, I suppose.
What I do think, though, is that in the lyrical sense, it was an interesting experience because all of the songs are written either through the perspective of certain characters or from a third-person perspective on certain characters or certain aspects of the story and certain scenes.
There was one very specific scene that was heavily the inspiration for ‘i can't trust your eyes’ and I don't really want to go into too much detail because I don't want to give any spoilers, but when I read that scene in the script, I knew that I wanted to write a song that would kind of capture that scene and that dynamic between those characters in that scene.
Then there's the title track "born to be" and that song is written from a third-person perspective about a very specific being in the story, and about one of the deeper meanings of the movie, really. There's the song "it’s too late to turn back now.’ That song is written through the perspectives of a few different characters, but a big part of it is written from the perspective of the character that I played, which I really wanted to try and write a song that would represent her. Even though it's not the whole song, you know, there's other characters and things weaved into it, but a big part of it is her story, which to me felt really exciting as well. So, I think lyrically it was more different than sonically to me to write for a movie.
The B-Side Hour: You mentioned that the project taught you how intertwined acting and songwriting are for you. What did you discover about that relationship while working on Orion, and how do you think it will influence your creative process in the future?
Karin Ann: Acting and music is something that I've always wanted to do, and I've always wanted to do both. They were never really separate in my head also, because I grew up on a lot of musical theater, which incorporates both, and a lot of sports that express music through movement, which, again, incorporated multifaceted storytelling. It was just a very exciting opportunity, really. I think that for both acting and songwriting, you need to be in touch with who you are, and you need to know yourself quite well, and you need to understand your emotions and where you're coming from quite a bit.
I think I have that deep understanding of myself, which is not to say that you're not always learning something new about yourself. You are, especially as you experience things and you grow, but I think being really in touch with yourself and continuously learning about yourself and spending time with yourself is very helpful for both acting and music.
For acting, you have to build a character from the ground up, and you have to make that character a real person, and basically make their life story up in your head. You work with what you're given. You work with what's in the script and what the team that is writing the script tells you, but they never tell you everything about a character, so there's always stuff that you have to kind of make up, and you have to make it up in a way that explains their actions and their thought processes and why they see the way the world, the way they see them, they see it, and why they are the way they are.
In songwriting, you write about your experiences and about your life and why you are the way you are, and why you see the world the way you see it. It's all very interconnected. I think I was very scared of it at first, especially writing the music for it, but I think once I was immersed in the world, it just came to me very easily, and it really just solidified to me the fact that it is all very related.
The B-Side Hour: Your recent releases reflect a shift toward a more stripped-back, Americana-influenced sound. What drew you to that direction, and what has it allowed you to express that your earlier work couldn’t?
Karin Ann: I've always loved folk music and more acoustic music. It's in a lot of ways, a big part of what I grew up with. I even grew up going camping every year, and a family friend always brought his guitar, and we would be sitting around the fire singing songs. Back then, it was Czech songs. It's a part of who I am, and it always has been. Folk music from all walks of life, really, from Appalachian folk to Scottish folk to Irish folk to Slovak folk to Czech folk, all of it has been in my life and has been really important to me. Where I'm from, oral tradition and oral tradition through music was a big part of our history. I wasn't really confident in my songwriting enough to kind of fully lean into this direction until recently.
I think working on my first album, through the telescope, back in 2022, is when I started becoming more confident in myself as a writer and in myself as a musician. I started experimenting a lot more, and I started growing a lot more in how I write things and how I say things. It also kind of comes from the fact that English is not my first language. English is actually my third language, I think. So I just wasn't really confident in my ability to say the things I wanted to say in a way that works with that genre. I kind of set things a lot more literally in my earlier work. My first album is when I first started experimenting with metaphors more and when I started figuring out that I don't have to be scared of it, and I don't have to be scared of experimenting and trying things out and seeing what works. In the past few years, I went back to who I was before I got old enough to understand what society wants me to be and what's pushed on me and what trends are going on.
But instead, I kind of went back to who I was as a child and discovered a lot of the things that I loved as a child and the fact that I still love them. It's who I am, not just in music, but in a lot of other aspects of my life as well. That kind of also pushed me into that direction a lot more. Also the fact that I've, as probably a lot of other people, have been really, really sick of the push for artists to be online all the time. The more people push for me to be visible online and in reach, accessible 24/7, the more I kind of distance myself and the more I kind of disappear.
So I've been offline a lot more, and in that I've also gone back to music that is from times when the online world didn't exist, and found a lot of inspiration in that and a lot of spark in that. I've always expressed what I wanted to express. It just changed. I just changed. Obviously I as a person changed because I have grown so much, even though in a lot of ways, I kind of am now the most who I was as a child.
When I started doing music, I was a teenager. I was a lot angrier. I was a lot angstier. I was also, in a lot of ways, a lot more sad, which is not to say that now I am not. You know, we all have our good days and bad days, especially if you have certain mental health struggles, and I do, it just changes.
I think the way you approach them and the way you deal with the changes, I think now I'm a lot better at coping with certain things, and that is obviously reflected in my music as well.
The B-Side Hour: Both the film and the EP explore questions of identity, truth, loss and what it means to be human. Which of those themes resonated with you most while writing Orion, and why?
Karin Ann: All of those are very human things to experience. I think all of us as people have dealt with all of those before. I don't think there's a single person who has not dealt with those themes before. Not just one, all of them. I think something that I really loved about the movie from the beginning is the fact that it's very character-driven and that you have to pay attention to what the characters are saying and what they mean when they're saying it. As in, “Are there hidden meanings? Are they telling the truth? Are they trying to manipulate the situation?” You really have to look at humans as very complex to see what the characters are actually saying, which I really appreciate about this movie and all of the themes that it explores. Again, they're all very complex and very human, and any human being has experienced all of them.
The B-Side Hour: You originally found your creative voice through graphic design, and visuals have remained an essential part of your work ever since, particularly in your music videos. When you’re developing a new project, how do the visual and musical aspects influence one another?
Karin Ann: I never wanted to do graphic design, actually. I did visual arts more when I was growing up because that was what was accessible to me and what was supported in where I'm from. But I never wanted to do graphic design. That was just the option that I had because, again, the arts are not huge where I'm from, and it was one of the very few majors that I could do. If I wanted to do art, I wanted to do costume design or special effects makeup or, you know, kind of like the visual side, like set design, you know, stuff like that. That's what I wanted to do
Costume design was something I was very passionate about, especially growing up around a lot of sports that are artistic, and costume design was a big part of those sports as well. So that was what I was envisioning for myself. In the back of my mind, I always wanted to do music and acting. Literally ever since I can remember, like, I was 4, saying that “That's what I'm gonna do.” The visual side of things is very, very important to me. And again, it's all very connected in my brain. It's only natural that I think of it as something that's connected to the stories I'm bringing to life.
Again, growing up on a lot of musical theater, it's very intertwined with visual things as well, like movement, costumes, like you're literally showing the story. You're singing the story. You're in it. You're in the story. Same with the sports I did, you expressed music through movement, and you also had costumes that represented it, and it was all very cohesive and all very immersive. It's never been something separate, and it's always been a big part of what I do. They mostly go hand in hand for me. I, most of the time, already have a visual of what I want forming in my brain while I'm working on the musical side of things.
It very rarely happens that I finish the song before I have a visual in mind.
The B-Side Hour: You wrote the EP two years ago. Has living with these songs for that long before their release changed the way you hear or relate to them today?
Karin Ann: I never like sitting on my music, so it's been miserable waiting for it to come out, in a way, but that's because I just grow like anybody else. I grow, I change, I get better, I improve. I listen to stuff that's old, and I go, “Oh, I could have written this better. I could have changed this lyric and it would have been better,” or “I could have changed this aspect of production and it could have been better,” or “I could have edited this and it could have been better,” or “I could have done better on this take now,” because my voice has matured and it sounds different.
So in those ways, I always think of my music differently when it's not current to me. I wrote it a long time ago, and that's why I don't like sitting on my music. When I'm creating music, I like to take my time, and I like to make sure that it's where it needs to be. Once it's done and once I'm feeling like this is the best I can do at the given moment of me making it, then I need to put it out as soon as possible. Otherwise, I'm gonna not want to put it out, because I'm gonna end up not liking it, because I grow and I learn and I improve, and I figure out that there's stuff that older me versus younger me would have done differently, but I'm still proud of it. I'm still proud of it, and it's still a part of something, an experience that is very important in my journey as an artist.
The B-Side Hour: Because these songs were written to accompany a film, how do you imagine translating them into a live setting where the visuals and story aren’t there to guide the audience?
Karin Ann: I'm not sure if I'm gonna do that. I have not even thought about performing live for about a year now. I've kind of taken a step back in a lot of ways from live performance because I don't enjoy touring. I love playing shows, but I don't enjoy everything else that goes with touring. So I'm trying to figure out how I can play shows without having to tour, which is a challenge in itself.
I'm working on a lot of different music in the meantime. I'm gonna have so much new music by the time that any new live performances come about. I'm not sure if I'm gonna incorporate the soundtrack the same way that I don't incorporate stuff from five years ago, because I have new music that I would rather share with people, which is not to say that I will definitely not incorporate, maybe I will, who's to say? I haven't thought about it, and I'm probably not gonna think about it for a long time.
The B-Side Hour: With Orion, you’ve expanded into both film scoring and acting while continuing to grow as a solo artist. Looking ahead, do you see those different creative paths continuing to exist side by side, or is there one you’re especially excited to explore next?
Karin Ann: I really would want to focus on acting a lot more. It's definitely something that I've always wanted to do. Same with music, I always wanted to do both. With music, I've gotten a lot more opportunities to do it. With acting, I haven't gotten as many opportunities so far, so I would definitely love to do more of those, get more of those. Something that I really want to focus on in the future, hopefully in the near future, is musical theater. I would love to do musical theater. It's something I grew up on. It's something that I've always wanted to do, and it's always kind of been a goal of mine. So musical theater is something that I would definitely want to put in the forefront of my focus, but I can only influence so much. You know, I kind of have to go based on the opportunities I get. I'm also working on new music that people are gonna get to hear next year. So there's a lot of things that I'm working on and a lot of things that I would like to do, but we'll see what comes my way.