With her sophomore album Late Checkout, the New York-born bassist and songwriter pushes beyond psychedelic rock, shoegaze, and indie-pop conventions to capture the unpredictable energy of her live band. From Trey Anastasio’s Vermont studio to LCD Soundsystem’s creative headquarters, Rykman opens up about artistic freedom, the pressures of success, and why she’ll always bleed New York City.
Karina Rykman has a problem with genres.
Not because she can’t decide which one she belongs to, but because she doesn’t particularly understand why she should have to choose.
“I’m genre blind. I’m genre fluid. All I hear is music.”
It’s a fitting declaration from an artist whose musical universe has always existed somewhere between psychedelic experimentation, indie-rock immediacy, pop sensibility, and the kind of improvisational freedom that refuses to sit still long enough to be categorized.
On her sophomore album, Late Checkout, released September 25 via Karina Rykman/High Rotation Records, the New York City-born bassist, singer, and songwriter takes that philosophy further than ever.
Following her acclaimed 2023 debut Joyride, the new record is an exhilarating collision of sounds, textures, and emotions. There are reverb-soaked guitars, hypnotic grooves, expansive instrumental passages, and melodies that feel as though they could burst into something entirely unexpected at any moment.
But beneath the album’s kaleidoscopic exterior lies something more personal.
For the first time, Rykman is placing a greater emphasis on lyrical storytelling, allowing vulnerability to emerge alongside the exuberance that has defined her live performances.
And although she might resist the idea of a dramatic artistic reinvention, Late Checkout feels like the work of a musician increasingly comfortable with the contradictions that make her who she is.
“I just want to be myself to the nth degree,” she says.
Capturing Lightning in a Bottle
For Rykman, the biggest challenge in making Late Checkout wasn’t necessarily writing the songs.
It was figuring out how to capture the feeling of performing them.
Anyone familiar with her live shows knows that her musical identity extends far beyond technical proficiency on the bass.
There’s an infectious physicality to her performances, a sense of movement and spontaneity that makes even the most intricate arrangements feel instinctive.
The challenge was translating that energy into a studio environment without sacrificing its unpredictability.
“I really wanted Late Checkout to sound like us,” Rykman explains. “I wanted it to sound alive, like humans making music.”
To achieve that, she and longtime collaborators Adam November and Chris Corsico recorded the album’s basic tracks together in the same room.
Producer and songwriting partner Gabe Monro, who has worked with Rykman since the beginning, contributed the record’s keyboards and synthesizers. Pete Miller, who joined the touring band more recently, now helps bring that material to life onstage.
The decision to prioritize live ensemble performances marked an important evolution from the recording process behind Joyride.
Rather than treating the studio as a place to construct songs one instrument at a time, Rykman approached it as an opportunity to preserve the chemistry that develops when musicians respond to one another in real time.
Still, she admits that spontaneity is difficult to manufacture.
“It’s hard to capture lightning in a bottle,” she says.
But on songs like “Shoegaze Summer,” “Late Checkout,” and “Childlike,” she believes the band came remarkably close.
The resulting album doesn’t simply reproduce the band’s live sound. It attempts to preserve the emotional charge that makes those performances meaningful.
Between Vermont and New York City
The album’s recording locations were as contrasting as the music itself.
Part of Late Checkout was created at The Barn, Trey Anastasio’s studio in Westford, Vermont, where Rykman and her collaborators spent fourteen days living and recording together.
The experience was immersive, relaxed, and creatively liberating.
“We all lived there together for 14 days and didn’t leave once,” she recalls.
The rural environment offered the musicians an opportunity to focus entirely on their shared creative process, away from the distractions of everyday life.
The second phase took place at DFA Studios in New York City, the recording space associated with LCD Soundsystem’s influential musical world.
There, the focus shifted toward synthesizers, keyboards, and vocals.
The juxtaposition between the two spaces became central to the album’s character.
The Barn provided the foundation of live instrumentation and collective energy, while DFA offered a setting for electronic textures and more detailed production.
“The juxtaposition of rural Vermont studio vs. modern NYC studio makes this record what it is,” Rykman explains.
It’s a contrast that mirrors the album’s refusal to settle into a single musical identity.
At one moment, Late Checkout embraces the expansive possibilities of psychedelic rock. At another, it drifts into the hazy atmospheres of shoegaze or the sleek, nocturnal textures of darkwave.
For Rykman, these aren’t competing influences.
They’re simply different ways of expressing the same musical instinct.
Riverside Drive and the Geography of Belonging
Despite the album’s stylistic breadth, one of its most emotionally revealing moments is also among its most personal.
“Riverside Drive,” accompanied by a newly released visualizer, takes its name from the Manhattan street where Rykman grew up.
The song explores the emotional disorientation of spending long stretches on the road and the overwhelming comfort of returning home.
It’s a subject that has become increasingly relevant as her career has expanded.
Between touring, festivals, recording sessions, and collaborations, Rykman has spent much of the past several years moving from one city to another.
That constant movement is exhilarating, but it can also create a peculiar sense of instability.
“My blood is carbonated / we’ve been shaking so long,” she sings, capturing the restless physical and emotional sensation of life in transit.
For Rykman, “Riverside Drive” represents the moment when that instability finally gives way to familiarity.
“It’s about the feeling of being disheveled out on the road for a long time, and the warm embrace of home welcoming you back,” she explains.
The song is also one of her personal favorites on the album.
And although her music has taken her around the world, New York remains inseparable from her artistic identity.
“New York City never escapes my personality or my music,” she says. “It’s baked in to everything I do.”
Then she offers a simpler explanation.
“I bleed NYC.”
That connection to the city has shaped nearly every stage of her career.
From playing in bands as a teenager to performing alongside artists like Trey Anastasio, My Morning Jacket, Khruangbin, and Dave Matthews & Tim Reynolds, Rykman’s musical education has been defined by a combination of curiosity, immersion, and relentless participation.
Her recent celebration at New York’s iconic Zabar’s, where she staged the institution’s first-ever in-store performance and introduced a Late Checkout-inspired version of her signature “Babkarina,” offered another playful expression of that hometown connection.
For Rykman, music and New York aren’t separate parts of her identity.
They’re different expressions of the same life.
The Art of Being Yourself
There’s something particularly compelling about an artist who has spent years performing alongside established musicians yet remains determined not to imitate any of them.
Rykman’s career has placed her in the orbit of artists whose approaches to music vary dramatically.
From the improvisational worlds of Phish and the jam-band community to the atmospheric grooves of Khruangbin and the alternative rock sensibilities of My Morning Jacket, her experiences have exposed her to a remarkably wide musical vocabulary.
But the most important lesson she has taken from those collaborations isn’t a particular technique or sound.
It’s the importance of individuality.
“All my favorite musicians lean into their specific singularities,” she explains.
That principle also informs her approach to songwriting.
As a bassist who fronts her own project, Rykman occupies a position that challenges some of the traditional expectations surrounding singer-songwriters.
Her relationship with rhythm and melody begins with the bass, an instrument that often functions as the structural foundation of a song rather than its most visible melodic voice.
For Rykman, however, the bass is nonnegotiable.
“If the bass line doesn’t hold my attention, the song gets scrapped.”
That instinct occasionally creates its own complications, especially when she writes intricate bass parts that intersect with equally demanding vocal melodies.
But the difficulty is part of the process.
Rather than simplifying her musical instincts to fit a conventional frontperson role, she allows the instrument that first defined her identity to remain at the center of her creative decisions.
The Destination Is Not Our Concern
If Joyride introduced Rykman as a solo artist with a seemingly limitless appetite for musical exploration, Late Checkout reveals someone increasingly aware of the emotional demands that come with pursuing that ambition.
The three years between records brought bigger shows, new milestones, and a growing audience.
They also brought pressure.
Rykman admits that she placed enormous expectations on herself while making her second album.
“I ended up putting an astronomical amount of pressure on myself regarding my sophomore record,” she says.
Although she’s proud of the result, she hopes to approach her next project with a little less anxiety.
It’s an unexpectedly vulnerable admission from an artist whose public persona radiates enthusiasm and confidence.
But perhaps that’s what makes Late Checkout such an interesting progression.
The joy remains, but it now exists alongside a more open acknowledgment of uncertainty, exhaustion, and the emotional realities of a life spent constantly moving.
Nowhere is that philosophy expressed more clearly than on “Balcony,” where Rykman sings:
“The destination is not our concern / This is the journey: let it burn.”
It’s a lyric that could easily serve as a mission statement for her entire career.
And for Rykman, it extends far beyond music.
“I believe you have to enjoy the nuts and bolts and the actual DOING,” she explains, arguing that the external rewards of success can never replace the satisfaction of the creative process itself.
The shows, the travel, the friendships, the shared experiences, and the unpredictable moments that unfold along the way are what ultimately matter.
In an industry obsessed with milestones, numbers, and increasingly narrow definitions of success, Rykman’s perspective feels almost radical in its simplicity.
She doesn’t want to arrive somewhere and declare the journey complete.
She wants to keep playing.
Keep experimenting.
Keep surrounding herself with musicians who challenge and inspire her.
And keep making music that sounds unmistakably like Karina Rykman, even when nobody can agree on what genre it belongs to.
After all, the destination was never really the point.
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In Conversation With Karina Rykman
Late Checkout arrives three years after Joyride. What changed most for you—musically and personally—between those two records?
The shows got bigger, and aside from all the notches in my belt and milestones that occurred between the two records, I ended up putting an astronomical amount of pressure on myself regarding my sophomore record. Which, in retrospect, I’m sort of glad I did, because I love Late Checkout and I’m wildly proud of it. But I think next time I’ll do my best to make myself less insane.
You’ve described this album as bringing the energy of your road-tested live band more directly into your studio work. How did Adam November, Pete Miller and Chris Corsico change the way you approached writing and recording this time around?
I really wanted Late Checkout to sound like us. I wanted it to sound alive, like humans making music. Pete Miller joined the band a few months ago on keyboards, so he wasn’t around for the recording process, but me and Adam and Chris recorded all the basic tracks live and together in the same room, which made a huge difference. Gabe Monro, my producer and songwriting partner since the beginning, plays all the keyboard parts on the record. I’m very proud of the work we did in trying to serve and breathe life into these songs.
The record was made between Trey Anastasio’s The Barn and DFA Studios, two spaces with very different musical histories. Did those environments influence the personality or sound of the album?
Certainly, and I think this record wouldn’t be what it is without the confluence of the two magical spaces we got to work in. All the live band stuff was recorded at the Barn, which couldn’t have been a better space to work in. We all lived there together for 14 days and didn’t leave once. It was relaxed, convivial, and wildly inspiring. DFA is where we tracked all the synths and keyboards and vocals – which was incredible as well! The juxtaposition of rural Vermont studio vs. modern NYC studio makes this record what it is.
Late Checkout seems to live between psychedelic rock, indie, shoegaze, darkwave and pop, without fully committing to any one of them. Do genres still matter to you when you’re making music, or are they something you think about afterward?
They don’t matter to me at all. I’m genre blind. I’m genre fluid. All I hear is music. Describing what I make, and putting it into these boxes, is the worst part of my job.
There’s a stronger emphasis on lyrical storytelling on this record. Was becoming more vulnerable or narrative-driven as a songwriter something you consciously wanted to challenge yourself to do?
It feels like a natural evolution, but, yes, I did really want to write song-songs. Songs that stand on their own. I definitely didn’t intend to be more vulnerable but, alas, the writing process took its toll and I ended up writing a few what I felt were “too good to cut” songs that fall into the vulnerable category.
“Riverside Drive” is described as an emotional love letter to the grind. As someone born and raised in New York, what does Riverside Drive represent to you personally, and how much of your relationship with the city made its way into this album?
Riverside Drive is about the feeling of being disheveled out on the road for a long time, and the warm embrace of home welcoming you back. I grew up on Riverside Drive, and that song is probably my favorite of the record. It just feels honest, and open, and I love the hooks and the progression. It details the feelings of instability that come with this life (“my blood is carbonated / we’ve been shaking so long”) and tries to paint a picture of what that feeling is truly like. Returning, belonging, home, etc. New York City never escapes my personality or my music. It’s baked in to everything I do, and everything that defines me, no matter what. I bleed NYC.
One of the defining things about you as a performer is how much joy and physical energy you bring to the stage. Is it difficult to capture something that spontaneous in a studio, or did you deliberately leave room for imperfection and instinct?
I find it very difficult to capture in a studio, which is why I love performing live so much. It’s electric, it’s ever-changing…there’s nothing like it. It’s hard to capture lightening in a bottle but I’d say we did a helluva job trying to do so, and the end of “Shoegaze Summer” and “Late Checkout” showcase that perhaps the best of any of the tunes. And the end of “Childlike”. Chills.
In “Balcony,” you sing, “The destination is not our concern / This is the journey: let it burn.” That feels almost like a philosophy for your career. Has your definition of success changed since releasing Joyride?
That’s my philosophy for my life, not only my career. I believe you have to enjoy the nuts and bolts and the actual DOING, because the bells and whistles of success are always bullshit, even if they feel awesome at the time. Which, they do. But I actively adore the playing, the touring, the traveling, the laughing, the traveling circus that we bring to each town. It’s an incredible life. I’m grateful for every millisecond I get to spend doing this with people I adore. And no, I wouldn’t say it’s changed since Joyride – it’s only intensified my love for the journey.
You started playing in bands as a teenager and have since performed alongside artists ranging from Trey Anastasio and My Morning Jacket to Khruangbin and Dave Matthews & Tim Reynolds. What have years of being around radically different musicians taught you about developing a musical identity of your own?
So, so much. I’m a musical sponge. All my favorite musicians lean into their specific singularities, and that’s exactly what they’ve all emboldened in me. I just want to be myself to the nth degree.
You’re a bassist fronting your own project, which still isn’t the most conventional path for a singer-songwriter. How does thinking like a bass player shape the way you write songs, particularly rhythm, melody and the relationship between instruments?
It makes me so mad at myself when I write complex baselines that intersect with complex vocal melodies and I have to play both at the same time! Otherwise it just makes me bass-fixated, like if the bass line doesn’t hold my attention, the song gets scrapped. Simple as that.
Karina Rykman’s sophomore album Late Checkout is available now via Karina Rykman/High Rotation Records.
The album features “Easy, Rider,” “Late Checkout,” “Shoegaze Summer,” “Riverside Drive,” and eight additional tracks.
For upcoming performances and ticket information, visit karinarykman.com/tour.
