Tiny Habits Talk New Album All For Something & Working With Friends

Audrey Fromson
·10 min read

Photo Credit: Tyler Krippaehne

Like many great love stories, the epic musical romance of Tiny Habits started with a DM.

It was the spring of 2021, and students were emerging from a post-spring break, two-week quarantine. One night Maya Rae messaged Judah Mayowa to ask if he wanted to sing with her. Then Rae reached out to Cinya Khan with the same question. Soon, the three Berklee College of Music students convened in Rae’s room and realized they’d struck sonic gold. Videos of the group singing in stairwells and dorm rooms captivated audiences online.

Despite their staggered schedules, the band continued to make music together. Mayowa dropped out of Berklee that next fall, staying in the city to work. Khan graduated last spring and settled close by, and Rae accepted her diploma just weeks ago. When they tell me over a video call (from Germany, where they were playing a show before jetting off to another city on their summer tour) that they’re best friends, I believe them. Words aren’t even necessary. They’re hugging each other, resting their heads on one another’s shoulders, jumping in to finish a thought when someone else’s voice trails off. They seem more like siblings than bandmates.

Below, Teen Vogue spoke with Tiny Habits ahead of their debut album, All For Something, out May 24, about nostalgia, friendship, and their next big moves.

Teen Vogue: How does it feel that people all the way across the world are coming to your shows knowing your songs and lyrics?

Judah Mayowa: It's really crazy because last time we were [in Germany] we opened for Noah [Kahan] which was amazing, but now it's our own fans. It’s just very surreal.

TV: I want to hear about how the band started and how you decided on the name.

Maya Rae: Judah and I started Berklee online, because it was like right in the middle of the pandemic. Cinya had started a year before us. The way you would meet people and make friends during that time was just by following people on Instagram that you thought were cool. That fall I had followed both of them on Instagram because I thought they were amazing musicians. And when we arrived back at school for our spring hybrid semester, you had to quarantine for two weeks. The night we got out of quarantine, I was DM’ing with Judah and I invited him to my dorm room to sing. Then that same day Cinya had posted this little PSA vlog thing on her Instagram story basically not knowing how to use the toilet paper holder.

And then I swiped up because I also didn't know how to use it and she sent another vlog back basically showing me how to do it, and so that's how we started talking. Then I was like, “Hey my friend is over right now and we're singing. Do you want to come by?”

Cinya Khan: I was like, “No no I can't — like I'm so scared!” But I went.

JM: I come off as a very shy person. So when Maya was like, let's sing together, I was originally, like, oh, should I cancel? And imagine if I didn't go.

MR: We kept singing together in dorm rooms and stairwells that semester and then I remember going home that summer being like, the thing that I want to do the most when I get back to school is sing more with them. That was my highlight of the semester. Then a full year later we were a band.

JM: We sang together maybe twice or three times in 2021 and then that following January of 2022 we were like, let's be a band.

MR: The reason we made the Tiny Habits account is because Cinya posted our “A Thousand Miles” cover on her TikTok, and it was our first video that went semi viral. Joe Jonas commented. He was like, “love this.” And we were like, oh, my God. We have Joe Jonas.

CK: This must mean something.

MR: And so I think maybe a couple days later we were like, well, let's, like, make one official band account, basically.

CK: Still with no expectation. It was mostly just for convenience’s sake. We were all just sending words back and forth. And then I think we landed on “habits” because that just seemed like a cool word. Yesterday, Judah was like, what would you guys rename us if we were to pick a new name? And I was like, nothing. There is nothing. I love our name.

TV: There is something really fitting about the name. A lot of your lyrics focus on the minutiae of life. What did the collaboration process look like for the album? I noticed there were names on the songwriting credits who aren't part of the trio.

JM: A lot of these songs are from even before we were a band, from the years of writing as individuals. At least one of them I had written because my college roommate gave me this guitar part he had written. There were also songs that we had written together.

CK: Even before we brought the songs to Tony [Berg] and Will [Maclellan] we'd been doing shows in Boston and opening for a few people. And so there were songs that we hadn't released yet but were singing live. I think a couple of them, or at least one of them, was written during the process of making the record happen. I did one of the songs with my friend Eli. And so he's totally part of the song.

MR: I wrote “Broken” with my cousin. And then there’s Stav [Redlich].

CK: We have different collaborators. Sweet people we're also very close to.

MR: Sweet people we love.

CK: Big shout out to all the players on this album because I feel like they contributed so much of what the album turned into. They just played what was intuitive to them and what they felt made sense.

TV: How did you find the backing band?

C.K. Tony is really well-connected. He knows everybody. It's bizarre. We’ll be at the studio, and he'll just call anyone and they can show up in like 20 minutes. I just had a really sweet thought, actually.

MR: What is it?

CK: A lot of the songs that I contributed to this album — songwriting-wise — are about a breakup from a relationship that I wouldn't have ended if it weren't for both of you being like, “Girl, you gotta get out.”

JM: Being close to them and knowing each story behind each song is really a blessing because they're just my best friends at the end of the day.

MR: When one person feels a certain way usually it's reflected in the other people just because we're so close and we're all very tapped into our emotions or other people's emotions.

TV: That's a beautiful process. You're writing an archive together. I would love for you to fill in the blanks with my interpretation of the record. It's obviously following a breakup from someone or something, and there's a point in the album where things really change and you're like, “Okay. I'm okay being by myself.” Of course every listener is going to have a different interpretation and take what they need from it, but that's what I was getting.

CK: Well what's funny about that is that I actually haven't even thought about that at all. I think we were making the order of the album based on just what makes sense sonically. But it's interesting, I feel like that actually does make sense.

JM: Yeah that's true. That's kind of crazy.

CK: [Laughs] Actually no — like that definitely was our idea.

TV: I felt like “Small Enough” was the inflection point of the album.

JM: Yes! I was just going to say “Small Enough.” It’s definitely one of those songs where you're like, “Okay I finally accepted it's over,” or you realize, “I haven't thought about this specific situation in so long. Look at how far I've come from this moment in my life where I felt like I actually was not going to get through this thing.”

TV: In “Wishes” there’s extreme vulnerability, and I think you are really tapped into what a lot of people in our generation are feeling. I imagine sharing those vulnerabilities feels safer when you’re making music as a group?

JM: Absolutely. It's a lot easier. I wasn't actually in a place where I could express my feelings in the most healthy way until I met these two. I was like, “Wait I don't know why I haven't spent my whole life doing this.” With our relationship, if we need to deal with something, we just say right away, “Hey I'm sad” or, “Hey this hurt me,” and then we talk it out.

CK: Since there's three of us, nobody really knows who's singing about what, so there's that safety net.

MR: I think that translates to every aspect of this job or this industry. Being an artist has its challenges and its beauties and all the things, but I think — we talk about this all the time — being able to do it together and experience all this together, although it has its hard days and its hard moments, makes it 10 times easier.

TV: I think you are all really tapped into nostalgia. “Mudroom” particularly stuck out to me.

CK: I grew up in suburban New Jersey, and the idea of a mudroom is such a specific feeling to me. It's autumn and wet boots, and I feel like that's always been our vibe. I also feel like folk music is intrinsically tied to nature.

TV: The album was very cozy and felt so specifically tied to place. Austin, Crosby Court. You are all from different places, and I would love to hear you all talk about those lyrical decisions.

JM: I feel like setting is really an important part of not even just songwriting but understanding someone's story, or at least our story, because we're all from very different places and we have been to a lot of places together. This is where I was when this thing happened or this is where we had this conversation. You can flip it the other way around, I remember we had this conversation because I was at this place.

MR: Crosby Court you made up.

CK: That whole song is not a real story.

TV: Thank you for saying that. I was Googling it like crazy.

JM: Crosby Court is sort of homage to David Crosby right?

MR: Yeah, David Crosby was one of the first people to recognize what we were doing right at the beginning.

TV: How was recording in L.A.?

MR: We recorded at Sound City, an iconic studio, with Tony Berg and Will Maclellan. We're all moving to LA. It's a big change. We were so Boston-based for so long, and LA is scary and big.

CK: I've only ever lived on the east coast. I don't know what I'm gonna do.

MR: We’ll have each other.

Originally Appeared on Teen Vogue

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