A year after NYIKO first caught our attention with Sugar, the Los Angeles artist returns with Fate, his second album and most expansive project yet. Out today via Trailing Twelve Records, its ten tracks move between synth-pop, new wave and post-punk while looking at all those forces, visible or not, that end up having a say in how we live.
Singer, songwriter, producer and visual artist, NYIKO has never been particularly easy to place inside a single box. His background stretches from hip hop and piano-led songwriting to emo, hardcore and electronic production, but Fate isn’t really about showing where all those references come from. Across the record, his attention moves through online intimacy, parasocial relationships, nostalgia, conspiracy culture, animal rights and the very human search for belonging.
“I wanted to write an album about the invisible forces that shape our lives,” NYIKO says. “We spend so much time believing we’re making independent choices without realising how much we’re being pulled by things outside ourselves.” It is a pretty good way into Fate, a record that keeps coming back to the space between what we choose and everything quietly influencing those choices.
Some of this territory will already feel familiar to those who have been following him. Almost exactly a year ago, we spoke about Sugar, a track built around temptation and control, and what happens when desire begins to override logic. Now included on Fate, the song finds a natural home within the wider picture NYIKO is drawing.
More recently, at the end of August, he shared Stay Young. The track came from a contradiction he had long been fascinated by: growing older often brings more freedom, yet the simplicity and possibility associated with youth remain difficult to leave behind. As NYIKO put it a few days ago, the song is also about keeping alive the part of yourself that feels “curious, rebellious, and hopeful.”
And today, there’s more than the album to discover. Neighborhood, one of the record’s focus tracks alongside Sugar and Summer of Outrage, arrives with a new music video directed and edited by Sabrina Gimenez, giving Fate a visual entry point on release day.
What works about Fate is that its big idea never asks to be solved. NYIKO takes subjects that can easily become overwhelming and brings them back to experiences we recognise, from wanting and remembering to connecting with others and trying to understand ourselves. Maybe fate and choice were never opposites to begin with. Fate leaves that thought hanging, and it’s better for it.
