In the lead up to her third project, Orion, the Los Angeles-based artist Orion Sun has been thinking about the ways she relates to the world around her. “Earth is my favorite muse,” she says. “The more I’m able to understand that, the more I see where we’re at.” Lately, as she tells The FADER, it’s through ideas about the vastness of space and the healing powers of nature where she’s found the most grounding: “It spills out into the music. I don’t necessarily want you to think of trees or anything like that. But I hope it reminds you of nature heals you.”
Most recently, she found herself immersed by the sights and sounds of space and nature for her FADER X Crocs’ Echo Your Streets performance, bringing the album cut “Sweet” to life against a backdrop of cosmic projections as samples of NASA recordings, ocean sounds, and wildlife whirled around her. “My streets are the Universe,” she says in its first few moments, a nod to the expansive creativity that defines the project. “...there’s no limit to where I can create, where I can go.”
Across its 14 tracks, Orion’s smoky vocals bound over fluttering drum loops, murky guitar licks, lush synths, and samples from the world around her, stretching the limits of indie rock, neo-soul, and hip-hop, all with its alt-R&B underpinnings intact. Add to that, in the time since her last project, 2022’s Getaway, Orion Sun has seen her own relationship with self-expression evolve — an after-effect of the heartbreak that lays at Orion’s center. Bolder, laser-focused and more self-assured, it’s the kind of quiet confidence that’s also shifted her overall creative process. “As a woman, especially the more I collaborate, it’s a little uncomfortable to take up space in some of these rooms,” she says. “These days everybody and their mama is like, ‘we should put drums on this!’ and I was just like ‘no.’ I was just really blessed to be able to work with people that respected that.”
By maneuvering through these decisions, Orion says she was able to take calculated risks in a way she hadn’t on previous projects. “[It wasn’t] so much just throwing paint at the wall, but more so that I know what kinds of colors to throw at the wall,” she says. “Or I’ll mix them before trying to figure out what color I made with the splats. Just more intentional randomness.” That intentionality extends even to the project’s name. Self-titled albums are often an artist’s first; but in giving her latest effort her own name, it plays on the idea of rebirth and reinvention: “I view this album as my catalyst. I had a very interesting trajectory in the music industry so far, to the point where I feel like a baby still.”
“I’m not trying to romanticize struggle, but I’ve noticed that when you’re that broken… you’re able to sort of wake up.”
On Orion, she explores the endless and sometimes cyclical nature of heartbreak and healing; tracking an informal three-act journey from its earliest moments of anguish to the eventual hard-fought gratitude that comes after deep self-reflection. “That’s also why I called it Orion,” she says, “because by the time you get to the end of the album, the Sun is right there. It’s bigger than me, and that makes the pain easier to get through.” That pain eventually leads to vulnerability. “I’m not the same / love made me brave,” she sings on “Sweet.” On “Sick,” she sings: “I’m crying all alone again / pitiful, pitiful, pathetic / I don’t regret it.” Orion runs toward heartbreak, embracing its uncertainties as something that can change her for the better. “I’ve been marinating on this thought recently, and I really hope that there’s heartbreak in heaven because it’s the only thing that really just makes it all understandable to me," she says. “I'm not trying to romanticize struggle, but I’ve noticed that when you’re that broken… you’re able to sort of wake up.”
This notion of awakening, and the clarity that often comes with it, is an important theme across the album. Along with taking on heartbreak and vulnerability, the album also served as a way for Orion to explore her personal theory that Earth is quite literally the Garden of Eden, with our own access blocked by a reliance on technology. “Who’s to say that’s not where we are?” she asks. “I look at it more as there [being] guidelines to living this life if you want there to be, whether it’s from nature or your favorite poet. There’s enough out here that could kind of give you guidance as to what this is all about.”
For Orion, that interconnected thinking imbues her with a sense of creativity that extends to other mediums, from moody visualizers to her personal style, which she describes as androgynous, raw, and effortless. “I had a mini performance today and I was like, I’m going to wear some dress pants and then just a crop t-shirt because I really like that balance of casual and a ‘I could wear it to work’ vibe,” she explains. For her Echo Your Streets performance, she sports a similarly utilitarian but laid back fit, donning black jeans and a black button-up alongside a pair of black pair of Crocs Echo Clogs with bold custom accessories. “It just flows into the music because self-expression is so important to me, even how I’m able to customize my Crocs. Being able to create your own individual stamp on stuff is everything.”
Within that individuality, Orion has evolved many times over, growing with each iteration. Maybe we do live in a multiverse — or maybe we exist in a constant cycle of death and rebirth, taking with us pieces of our previous form along the way. Orion Sun recently found an old embroidered bracelet she once wore everywhere; it was a chance to reflect on just how far she’d come on not only her creative journey, but her personal one. “So many versions of me wore that bracelet,” she explains. “When I wear it now, it feels like I’m bringing all of those versions with. Like I’m mobbin’ deep even though I’m showing up by myself.”