Meet Taty, one of KCRW’s featured music artists for the Young Creators Project.
Meet Taty, one of KCRW’s featured music artists for the Young Creators Project.
Photo courtesy of the artist.

Young Creators Project spotlight: Taty

Written by Marion Hodges

Each day this week, we’re spotlighting the homegrown budding talent sourced via KCRW’s Young Creators Project, a community arts mentorship platform celebrating the creative work of SoCal residents under 21. 

If you’re a fan of the Netflix series “I Am Not Okay with This,” then you’re likely already familiar with Taty’s work. The Silverlake-based queer singer-songwriter, composer, and activist born Tatyana Richaud is the voice behind the show’s fictional central band Bloodwitch. 

The 18-year-old LACHSA senior teamed up with singer-songwriter, Blur guitarist, and composer Graham Coxon to create runaway hits like “Hey Little Girl” and “Fly.” It sparked enough of a fervor online for the fake band to eventually release a real album of My Bloody Valentine-inspired tracks that would have sounded right at home on the KCRW airwaves during the mid-’80s.

As a child, Taty, who holds dual French-American citizenship, says she “worked out melodies on my alligator keyboard while dreaming of  the stories they told,” and learned to read music before she could learn to read words. She loves poetry, is versed in classical and jazz piano, and focuses on music production, composition, orchestration, and vocals. 

More: Today’s Top Tune: Taty – “It’s Not A Problem” 

With a melodic and lyrical prowess that evokes the likes of Phoebe Bridgers and Jensen McRae, it’s hard to believe this rising talent has only performed at school concerts and talent shows, but we have a feeling that won’t be the case for long — just check out her striking music video for “It’s Not A Problem,” directed by classmate Vivian Wolfson, for further proof. 

Taty joined Morning Becomes Eclectic co-host Anthony Valadez to discuss working with Coxon, her passion for composing for visual media, creating space for underrepresented artists, and more.

The following has been edited and condensed for clarity.

KCRW: How much does your environment in Silver Lake contribute to your creative ideas or music?

Tatyana Richaud: I live right next to the lake, the Silver Lake. So it's always nice to walk around the reservoir in that area. Since my parents both moved from different places, I think that their environments, where they grew up and where we go… when I go to France [where I have dual citizenship], and when I visit family, I think that [all of these] environments that I grew up in really, really do influence me.

Your way of connecting audio and visual languages is quite special. You’ve referenced being very much inspired by visuals. How does that influence what you put out?

I'm an aspiring film composer as well. I love writing music for anything visual. It’s something I’ve been after ever since I was young. I like to connect the two in the best way possible. I think that every visual, every story, really, should be accompanied by music or sound of some kind.

I want to study music for visual media in college. That's what I'm planning to major in. I do love singing and songwriting, but even the song that got me into [KCRW’s Young Creators Project] is connected to a powerful music video. I think the two are a beautiful pair, and they should go hand in hand more.



You’ve already worked with Graham Coxon of Blur. Tell us more about that.

I was working on the Netflix series “I Am Not Okay With This,” and we got in contact organically through both being connected to this show. And then he invited me to his studio, which was really cool. We worked together in this back house that he has. It’s a really nice setup. 

By this point, we had a full album’s worth of songs, and ran through all of them. I was the lead female vocalist, and he was the male vocalist. It was a lot of fun, and it was so interesting to observe how he did everything himself. I wasn’t expecting that. 

What was your main takeaway from that experience? 

It helped me realize that I could [make music] by myself. Watching him write these songs, and working on them with Logic, it was really inspiring. And I definitely left that experience knowing more than I did coming into it.

Tell us about the project you started at your high school called Artists For Change.

Artists For Change is a club at my school that me and some friends made. It was basically over Zoom over quarantine. We wanted to create a space where we could appreciate underrepresented artists, like artists of color, women, LGBTQ. It was a really cool space where we could bring in an artist every other week and talk about them and learn more about artists who we may not have known if we didn't have the club.

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