Valerija Michailova’s Debut EP

Photo by @meridij

The product of her music project Ecota that she began early last year, Valerija Michailova’s debut EP is a blend of indie, alternative, and bedroom pop that features four songs including the titular track: “What We Gonna Do?”.

Valerija Michailova or just Val, was born in Lithuania and is currently based in Newcastle, UK. She discovered her interest in music at four years old when her mom showed her their record collection and she immediately fell in love with music. Some of her earliest musical inspirations were Arctic Monkeys and Placebo, both who inspired her to start playing guitar and eventually write music. Today, she says her influences tend to be much more indie - especially artists like Mac DeMarco, Dayglow, and girl in red. Fans of Mac Demarco will especially notice and appreciate the subtle influences of his music on her EP, particularly on tracks like “Sunset” and “Right Now”.

Utilizing her free time during the pandemic, Val formed the musical alias Ecota and began to find her own sound – all in her bedroom! After releasing six songs and now her EP, she describes her current sound as “indie/alternative style with a little bit of lo-fi.” All the time spent exploring and experimenting to find her individual sound certainly pays off in her EP, forming well developed songs perfect for your spring playlist.

In producing her EP, Val’s main thoughts were; “about how it’s hard sometimes to know what people really think about you and you just start overthinking, stuck in your room, dreaming about things that will probably never happen.” The EP’s sound was developed with influence by the music Val listened to during the process as well, “While writing this album, I mostly was listening to girl in red, Clairo and all the nowadays indie music that goes viral all over the Internet now, so I think they helped me with the sound, but I still added a bit of brutality in my songs.”

Listen to her debut EP here on Soundcloud when it debuts April 16th!